
Class 1^ 35 2 5 
Book ,(Q.?~?d 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Being Forthright Studies of Men 
and Books; With Some Pages 
From a Man's Inner Life : : 



By MICHAEL tyONAHAN 

Author of Benigna Vena, etc. 



Second Edition : Revised, with new matter 



East Orange, N. J. 

THE PAPYRUS PUBLISHING CO. 

1909 



T5 3** r 



Copyright, 1903, by Michael Monahan 
Copyright, igog, by Michael Monahan 



©CU2536U 



To FINLEY PETER DUNNE 



The only art I boast is this — 

/ tooShave laughed with all the crowd, 
When the rich bonder of your wit 

Challenged their plaudits loud; 

And then, the jester's role aside, 

A finer spirit ha*be I known, 
A man with sorro%>. too, acquaint, 

A brother— yes, mine o%>n. 

A look into the merry eyes — 

Lol here are tears unshed 
That do but ask a kindred soul, 

To leave their fountain head. 

For you ha*be more than Falstaff's mirth, 
Nor less than Hamlet's teen; 

44 Wilt weep for Hecuba" — and then 
With laughter shake the scene* 

One of God's players playing out 

With zest a. Iveary part ; 
Teaching the sad world how to smile 

By strokes of genial art; 

Launching the scorn that blasts the knave, 

The jest that flays the fool f 
And by the right dCbine of wit 

Giving a nation rule. 



Laugh on, laugh on, dear Wit and Sage, 

The roaring crowds above: 
Yet keep for your o%>n chosen few 

The < Poet of their love. 

m. €M. 
&(ew York, 1908. 



Cbe Contents. 



In the Attic i 

The Poe Legend 5 

In Re Colonel Ingersoll 25 

Richard Wagner's Romance 47 

In the Red Room 57 

Saint Mark 65 

Oscar Wilde's Atonement (Postscript) 73 

Children of the Age 82 

The Black Friar 89 

Laf cadio Hearn 94 

A Fellow of the Rev. Dr. Hyde in 

Mr. Guppy 118 

A Port of Age 123 

On Letters 133 

The Kings V 138 

Louis the Grand 146 

The Song that is Solomon's 151 

Dining With Schopenhauer 155 

In Praise of Life 163 

The Only Way 170 

Gloria Mundi 175 

The Spring 177 

Pulvis et Umbra 181 



Shadows 187 

Sursum Corda 191 

Seeing the Old Town 194 

First Love 200 

The Great Redemption 205 

The Better Day 210 

Familiar Philosophy- 
Hope 217 

Sympathy 218 

Ideal 221 

Little Mother 223 

Love 225 

Epigrams and Aphorisms 228 

Song of the Rain 238 

Our Lady of Art 239 



In the attic. 



(By day of preface.) 




N old days, in merrie England, the chapman or 
pamphleteer set up shop in an attic, as much for 
economy's sake as to be out of easy reach of the 
police. Commonly he bit the thumb at Gov- 
ernment and the bilks were his natural foes. 
Great men out of place lent him secret support and counten- 
ance, paying the costs of his perilous trade and supplying 
him matter for his broadsides. His fidelity to his patrons 
was his best virtue; in other respects of conduct he was, it 
is to be feared, no better than he should have been. But the 
life was one of constant adventure and as such appealed to 
many daring spirits. Often they had to move, and quickly 
too, yet they were n6t always quick enough for the emissaries 
of Government. To stand in the pillory, there to submit to 
the nameless outrages of the London mob; to spend long 
years in jails fouler than a modern sewer; to be whipped 
and branded by the sovereign majesty of the law; to be 
hunted from one rookery to another — such was the lot of 
many a bold pamphleteer of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth 
centuries. 

Ah, well, my lads, they had a stirring time of it, for all 
their hard lines, and potently, though obscurely, they made 



2 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

themselves felt on public opinion, which, as hath been said, 
is but history in the making. Peace to them! — they and 
their types, their plotting and pamphleteering, their ballads 
and broadsides, have long since vanished from the scene; 
but some echo of their ancient hardihood, some smack of real 
service to the good old cause of liberty, which to render 
they bravely risked life and limb, — still linger in the world. 

I therefore feel that in publishing Papyrus from an attic 
I am in accord with some worthy literary traditions. To 
be sure, it's a very nice attic and roomy enough; well lighted, 
too, with walls and ceiling finished off and kalsomined. 
Strictly speaking, the Papyrus occupies only half the attic; 
the other half, which by a lucky chance is quite separate and 
partitioned off, the younger children use for a playhouse on 
rainy days. Oh, and I had almost forgotten, the family linen 
is sometimes dried there with great convenience. 

Allah is both wise and good: He sometimes puts it into 
the stony heart of a landlord (Jersey landlord at that) to 
make unwitting provision for the Children of the Dream. 

The stairway leading to both attics is quite dark and it 
turns sharply, but we don't feel that to be a great objection, 
as the Youngest is now walking and only swarms when he 
is going down stairs — which he does backward and with 
remarkable celerity. 

Once a month the children have great fun carrying the 
little brown booklets from the lower floor, where the printer 
delivers them, to the attic; and again from the attic to the 
lower floor, when ready to be mailed. That is, they think 
it's great fun — and surely a large family is not without its 
compensations. 



IN THE ATTIC 3 

The Papyrus, by the way, is just the age of our Youngest 
but One, a five-year-old girl. I am not sure of which I am 
the fonder, but the Mother, with a touch of artistic jealousy, 
says she is. 

I love this little attic room. Here I spend the only quiet 
hours that I may really call mine. Here, with the world 
and its taskmasters shut out, I cheat myself with a dream of 
independence — ah, an uneasy dream at best, and a fleeting 
one, but yet it links day unto day with a thread of gold. 
The good thoughts that come only with silence — peace with- 
out and within — have here their dwelling place. Here, too, 
I listen oft to a Voice which speaks of the sure though late 
reward that waits on unyielding effort, on hope that springs 
anew from each defeat, on faith in self that can stand against 
the world, on fidelity to the Dream! 

Yes, even though knowing myself unworthy of the high 
call it would lay upon me, I do hearken to that Voice — aye, 
and often sigh that I may not rise to those heights of heroism 
to which it points me. 

O little attic room, that has shared the secret of my dearest 
cherished hopes, that has known and ever knows something 
not all unworthy in me which to express is at once my joy 
and my despair, — who shall sit here in days to come when I 
am gone ? Pray God it be one who may think not unkindly 
of him that dreamed his dreams here for a space, and was, 
in his fashion, happy within your quiet walls. 

More commonly, however, I think of my literary prede- 
cessors, the old English chapmen and pamphleteers in their 



4 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

attics, and how the wind of time has long since blown them 
and their works away. 

And I smile to myself, once more put off beginning my 
Masterpiece . . . well, till to-morrow; turn down the 
light, and go softly to bed. 




ykkkkxkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk/ 



Cbe poe Legend 



Hti Unconventional Version, 




COMPLIMENT which mediocrity often pays 
to genius, is to indict it. 

So there is an indictment against Edgar 
Allan Poe, with a bill of particulars, the effect 
of which is to make him out the chief Horrible 
Example of our literary history. 

Most of his critics admit that he was a genius and deny 
that he was a respectable person. 

A considerable number deny his respectability with 
warmth and coldly concede to him a certain measure of 
poetical talent. 

A few embittered ones deny that he was either respectable 
or a genius. 

No one has ever contended for him that he was both a gen- 
ius and respectable. I do not make this claim, as I should not 
wish to appear too original; and, besides, I am content with 
the fact of his genius and care nothing for the question of 
respectability. Or, yes, I do care something for it, if 
by respectability is meant that prudent regard for self which 
would have prevented the suicide of Poe. I'm sure if he 
were living to-day, he would never think of drinking himself 
to death. His work would be better paid, for one thing, — 
supposing that he could get past the magazine editors, — and 
then we have learned a little how to drink — the art was crude 



6 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

and brutal in Poe's day. Perhaps this is the only respect in 
which we, the children of a later generation, are better ar- 
tists than he. 

The tradition of Poe's drunkenness hangs on so persist- 
ently that many people can think of him only in connection 
with that still popular melodrama, Ten-Nights-in-a-Bar- 
room. As a boy I used to fancy that he was cut out for the 
leading part in it. And in fact I saw a play not long ago — 
in the provinces, of course — in which the author of "The 
Raven' ' was shown drunk in every act and working up to a 
brilliant climax of the "horrors." . . . 

When I try to call up before my mind's eye the figure 
of Poe, the man in his habit as he lived, his daily walks and 
associates, the picture is at once broken up by an irruption of 
red and angry faces — old John Allan, Burton the Comedian 
(who could be so tragically in earnest and so damned vir- 
tuous with a poor poet) , White, Griswold, Wilmer, Graham, 
Briggs, the sweet singer of "Ben Bolt," and others of the 
queer literati of that day. Each and all declare in staccato, 
with positive forefinger raised, "We tell you the man was 
drunk!" Then Absalom Willis appears, bowing daintily, 
and says in mild deprecation, "No, I would not precisely say 
drunk — but do me the honor to read my article on the sub- 
ject in the 'Home Journal.' " The saintly Longfellow, 
evoked from the shades, seems to say, "Not merely drunk, 
but malignant." And a host of forgotten poetasters loom- 
ing dimly in the background, take up the Psalmist's words 
and make a refrain of them — "Not merely drunk, but ma- 
lignant!" 

Since this is what we get, in lieu of biography, by those 



THE POE LEGEND 7 

who have taken the life of Poe, it is no wonder that the 
obscure dramatist seizes on the same stuff for his purpose, 
degrading the most famous of our poets to the level of a 
bar-room hero. Whether or not it is possible at this late day 
to separate the fame of Poe from the foul legend of drunk- 
enness and sodden dissipation that has gathered about it, I 
would not venture to say ; but very sure am I that no one has 
yet attempted the feat. Even the mild and half apologetic 
Dr. Woodberry is gravely interested in the number, extent 
and variety of Poe's drunks. Let me not forget one honor- 
able exception, Edmund Clarence Stedman, who has taken 
his brother poet, "as he was and for what he was." I do not, 
however, include Mr. Stedman with the biographers of 
Poe — he stands rather at the head of those who have sought 
to interpret his genius and to safeguard his literary legacy. 
And though (I think) he brought no great love to the task — 
Poe is hardly a subject to inspire love — he has done it fairly 
and well. 

I may here observe, parenthetically, that in a very kind 
letter addressed to the author, Mr. Stedman demurs at the 
suggestion that he brought no great love to his critical labors 
on behalf of Poe — labors that have unquestionably raised 
the poet's literary status in the view of many, and have as 
certainly cleared away a mass of prejudice, evil report and 
misunderstanding attached to his personal character and rep- 
utation. But all I mean to convey is that Mr. Stedman's 
splendid work was done, as it appears to me, less for the love 
of Poe than the love of letters. In saying this I imply not 
the slightest reproach : Poe is a man to be pitied, praised, ad- 
mired, regretted; or, if you please, to be hated, envied, 



8 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

blamed and condemned. But love, — such love, say, as 
Lamb inspired in his friends and still inspires in his readers, 
— is not for the lonely singer of "Israfel." 

I agree with Poe's biographers that he got drunk often, 
but I am only sorry that he never got any fun out of it — the 
man was essentially unhumorous. I should be glad to hold a 
brief for Poe's drunkenness, if his tippling ever yielded him 
any solace; or, better still, if it ever inspired him to any gen- 
uine literary effort. We know well that some great poets have 
successfully wooed the Muse in their cups, but you can take 
my word for it, they were cold sober when they worked the 
thing out. It is true Emerson says (after Milton) that the 
poet who is to see visions of the gods should drink only 
water out of a wooden bowl. But Emerson belonged to the 
unjoyous race of New England Brahmins, who were sur- 
prisingly like the snow men children make, in that they 
lacked natural heat and bowels. We may not forget that a 
poet who stands for all time as an ideal type of sanity and 
genius — the always contemporary Quintus Horatius Flac- 
cus — has in many places guaranteed mediocrity to the ab- 
staining bard. 

So there was the best poetical warrant for Poe's drinking, 
if he could only have got any good out of it. But he couldn't 
and didn't; he was merely, at times frequent enough to 
justify his enemies, an ordinary dipsomaniac, craving the 
madness of alcohol; mirthless, darky sullen, quite insane, 
though perhaps physically harmless; hardly conscious of his 
own identity. Of the genial god Booze, who rewards his true 
devotees with jollity and mirth, with forget fulness of care 
and the golden promise of fortune, who makes poets of dull 



THE POE LEGEND 9 

men and gods of poets — of this splendid and beneficent deity, 
Poe knew nothing. That spell from which Horace drew his 
most charming visions; which inspired Burns with courage 
to sing amid the hopeless poverty of his lot; which kindled 
the genius of Byron and allured the fancy of Heine, like his 
own Lorelei; which is three-fourths of Beranger and one- 
half of Moore — to Poe meant only madness, the sordid kind 
from which men turn away with horror and disgust, and 
which too often leads to the clinic and the potter's field. The 
kindly spirit of wine, that for a brief time at least works an 
inspiring change in every man, enlarging the sympathies, 
softening the heart, prompting new and generous impulses, 
opening the soul shut up to self to the greater claims and 
interests of humanity, was, in the case of Poe, turned into a 
malefic genie, intent only upon the lowest forms of animal 
gratification and reckless of any and every ill wrought to 
body and soul. 

In other words — for I must not write a conventional essay 
— Poe was the kind of man that never should have touched 
the cup. For there are some men — oh, yes, I know it! — to 
whom the mildest wine ever distilled from grapes kissed by 
the sun in laughing valleys, is deadly poison, fatal as that 
draught brewed of old by the Colchian enchantress. And of 
these was poor Edgar Poe. 

Neither were there for him those negative but still pleas- 
ing virtues which are sometimes credited to a worshiper of 
the great god Booze — perhaps they are mostly fictitious, but 
this is a fraud at which Virtue herself may connive. I am 
very sure no one ever called Poe a "good fellow" for all the 
whiskey he drank; and his biographers also make the same 



io PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

omission, The drunkenness of Burns calls up the laughing 
genius of a hundred matchless ballads, the dance, the fair 
and the hot love that followed close upon; calls up the epic 
riot of beggars in the ale-house of Poosie Nancy — and we 
see the whole vivid life of Burns was of a piece with his 
poetry. To wish him less drunken or more sober (if you 
prefer it) is to wish him less a poet. 

Not so with Poe, as I have already shown. He got nothing 
from drink, in the way of literary inspiration, though some 
of his critics think he did, and, being themselves both sober 
and dull, appear to doubt whether anything so gotten is 
legitimate. I hate to lay irreverent hands on the popular 
belief that "The Raven" was composed during or just fol- 
lowing a crisis of drunken delirium — the poem is too elabo- 
rately artificial for that, — and has not Poe told us how he 
wrote it, in a confession which, more clearly than all the la- 
bored disparagement of his biographers, explains the vanity, 
the weakness and the fatal lack of humor in his make-up ? I 
do not find any suggestions of drink or "dope" in the samples 
of his prose which I dislike, such as a few of his "Old World 
Romances." If there be any "dope" in this stuff, it is, in my 
opinion, the natural dope of faculties when driven against 
their will to attempt things beyond the writer's province or 
power. And there is also the "dope" of what could be, at 
times, a fearfully bad style. But I am not writing a literary 
essay. 

I conclude, then, that in the case of Edgar Allan Poe, 
drink has no extenuating circumstances, though many might 
be pleaded for the poet himself. It made enemies for him of 
those who wanted to be his friends (if you will only believe 




THE POE LEGEND n 

them) ; it lost him his money — deuced little of it ever he 
had ; it helped to break his health, and it gave him no valua- 
ble literary inspiration. Some solace, I would gladly think, 
it yielded him, and maybe (who knows?) there was a blessed 
nepenthe in the peace it brought him at last when, after 
babbling a while on his cot in that Baltimore hospital, there 
came to him the only dreamless sleep he ever knew. 



LL his life long Poe dreamed of having a maga- 
zine of his own and never got his desire. He 
was always writing to his friends and possible 
patrons about this one darling dream ; but noth- 
ing came of it. The nearest he ever got to his 
wish was when he succeeded in drawing into his plan one T. 
C. Clarke, a Philadelphia publisher. Clarke had money, and 
he put up a certain amount toward the starting of the 
"Penn," as the magazine was to be called. Some initial steps 
were taken, and the moment seems to have been the most 
sanguine in Poe's long battle with adversity. He was full of 
enthusiasm and wrote to many friends, detailing his literary 
hopes and projects in connection with the new magazine. 
Then suddenly, and rather unaccountably, everything was 
dropped. It seems likely that Clarke took cold in his money — 
at any rate the "Penn" died a-borning. Poe had gone far 
enough to incur a good-sized debt to Clarke — he left in the 
latter's hands a manuscript as security, which, we may sup- 
pose, did not raise the temperature of that gentleman's 
finances. 



12 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Then the planning and the letter-writing and the making 
of prospectuses, with other architectural projects of the 
Spanish variety, went on and continued to the end of the 
chapter — good God ! how pathetic and yet grimly humorous 
it all is to one who has carried the same cross, and knows 
every inch of that Calvary ! Poe was at least spared the strug- 
gle which comes after possession; but I am aware that this is 
no consolation to the man who is dying to make his fight. 

Yet once again the chance fluttered into his hands, when 
he bought the "Broadway Journal" from a man named Bisco 
with a note of fifty dollars endorsed by Horace Greeley. Not 
long afterward Horace had the pleasure of paying the note 
and remained to the end a strong believer in Poe's imagina- 
tive gifts. About the same time that the philosopher parted 
with his money, Poe gave up his brief possession of the 
"Journal." But still he went on in the old hopeless, hopeful 
way, dreaming of that blessed magazine, which he had now 
decided to call the "Stylus" instead of the "Penn." And a 
name only it remained to the last. 

From these and many similar facts in the life of Poe his 
biographers to a man conclude that he had no business abil- 
ity. I am not so sure — I am only sure that he never had the 
money. In fact, Poe was never able to raise more than one 
hundred dollars at any one time in his whole life — once when 
he borrowed that sum to get married (and the sneerers say, 
forgot to repay it), and again when he won a like amount 
with a prize story. Yes, he got a judgment of something over 
two hundred dollars against his savage foe, Thomas Dunn 
English, but I am not aware that it was ever satisfied — think 
of Poe suing a man for literary libel ! His usual salary was 



THE POE LEGEND 13 

Ten Dollars a week — Burton, the tragic Comedian, held out 
a promise of more, but discharged him when the time to make 
good came round — and this after Poe had gained what was 
considered a literary reputation in those days. With such 
resources, to have started the kind of magazine Poe had 
always in mind, would have tasked a man of great business 
ability, with no poetical ideas floating about in his head to 
divert him from the Main Chance. 

Certainly Poe was not the man for the job — I doubt if he 
could have sold shares in El Dorado. But I do not think his 
failures, such as they were, justly convict him of a complete 
lack of that ordinary sense which enables a man to carry his 
money as far as the corner. There is a popular cant now, 
based on the success of some fortunate writers, that literary 
genius of high order is not inconsistent with first-rate business 
ability. I do not care to go into the discussion — especially as 
this is not a literary essay — but I will say that in most 
instances cited to prove the point, the money sense is a good 
deal more obvious than the literary genius. 

To make what is called a business success in this world, a 
man is required to do homage unto many gods. But though 
he pay the most devoted worship to the divinities of Thrift, 
Enterprise, Courage, Energy, Foresight, Calculation, he will 
still fail should he omit his tribute to a greater god than 
these — Expediency! 

In his poetical way Edgar Allan Poe went a-questing 
after many strange worships, and he was learned in all that 
mystic lore as far back as the Chaldeans. But he seems never 
to have got an inkling of that one universal religion in which 
all men believe, which settles all earthly things — the relent- 




i 4 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

less but impassive Divinity of Affairs, already named, by 
which success or failure is determined for every man that 
cometh into the world. 



OWARD the close of Poe's life a horde of female 
poets rushed upon his trail. His relations with 
them were not wholly "free from blame," to 
quote his biographers — they seem to have been, 
at any rate, platonic. A poetess who is always 
studying her own emotions for "copy" is not to be taken un- 
awares. I think Poe was in more danger of being led astray 
than any of the ladies whom he distinguished with his atten- 
tions. It is to be noted that they invariably speak of him as 
a "perfect gentlemen," even after he has ceased to honor 
them with his affections. To me there is something rather 
literary than womanly in such angelic charity and forgive- 
ness — 'tis too sugary sweet. Have we not heard that lovers 
estranged make the bitterest enemies ? At any rate the lover 
of "Ligeia," "Eleonora" and similar abstractions was not a 
man to be feared by a poetess of well-seasoned virtue. 

Yes, I am sure they only wanted to get copy out of him 
and to link their names with his. They were mostly widows, 
too — which makes the thing even more suspicious. One of 
them — that one to whom he addressed his finest lyric — was 
forty-five. Lord, Lord ! what liars these poets are ! I give 
you my word that until very lately I believed those perfect 
lines "To Helen" idealized some youthful love of Poe's. 
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which 
Are holy land. 



THE POE LEGEND 15 

Psyche lived in Providence, which is in the State of Rhode 
Island. She was, as I have said, forty-five, an age that should 
be above tempting or temptation. She wrote verses, now for- 
gotten, and her passion for Poe was of the most literary 
character. After a two-days' courtship he proposed to her 
and was accepted, on condition, however, that he amend his 
breath — which is to say, his habits. Poe seems to have 
regretted his rashness, for he at once started on a bat (these 
remarks are not literary), as if the prospect of his joy was 
too much for him. Still Helen would not reject him; she 
merely wrote him more poetry — and the poet again turned 
to drink as if to drown a great sorrow. A day was set for 
the wedding, and he began celebrating at the hotel bar long 
before the hour appointed for the ceremony. Helen heard 
of his early start, and, knowing what he could do in a long 
day with such an advantage, she sent for him and broke off 
the engagement. This is the only instance I know of in Poe's 
entire career where his drinking had the least appearance of 
sanity. 

Before this, and indeed during the lifetime of Mrs. Poe, 
he had broken with Mrs. Ellet, a lady who made feeble 
verse, but whose ability for scandal and mischief was out of 
the ordinary. It was through this daughter of the Muses 
that the poet became estranged from Mrs. Osgood, and 
there was a beautiful women's row, in which Margaret Ful- 
ler took a hand. Mrs. Osgood was a gushing person, fero- 
ciously intent on u copy," but of mature age and quite capable 
of taking care of herself. She declares and asseverates that 
Poe chased her to Providence — that fatal Providence ! — and 
to Albany, imploring her to> love him. I wonder where he 



1 6 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

got the money for these journeys — about this time he was 
lecturing on the "Cosmogony of the Universe," in order to 
raise funds for his eternally projected magazine. The very 
popular nature of the subject and his own qualities as a ly- 
ceum entertainer, which never would have commended him 
to the late Major Pond — incline me to the belief that Poe 
was not at that time burning much money in trips to Provi- 
dence and Albany. 

At any rate Mrs. Osgood cut him out, though on her 
death-bed, with a last effort of the ruling passion (or literary 
motive) she very handsomely forgave him and pronounced 
a touching eulogy on his moral character. 

Then there was "Annie," a married woman living near 
Boston, to whom Poe addressed a sincere and beautiful poem. 
The exigencies of her case rather strain the platonic theory, 
but I do not give up my brief, mind you. I suspect that Annie 
was behind the breaking off with Helen, but, of course, he 
couldn't marry Annie for the reason that she had a husband 
already (of whom we know no more) , and divorces were not 
then negotiated in record time. Annie was therefore obliged 
to be content with the sweet satisfaction of foiling a hated 
rival — and to a woman's heart we know this is the next best 
thing to landing the man. Annie, by the way, was not a liter- 
ary person: she wanted love from Poe, not copy; and she 
seems to have sincerely, if not very sensibly, loved the poet 
for himself. 

Remains the last of these queer attachments which throw 
a kind of grotesque romance over the closing years of Poe. 
Mrs. Shelton was of unimpeached maturity, like the rest, and 
like all the rest but one, a widow. She lived in Richmond, 



THE POE LEGEND 17 

Virginia, and she had been a boyish flame of Poe's. Mrs. 
Shelton was neither beautiful nor literary, and she had 
attained the ripe age of fifty years. But she was rich, and 
though Poe was not a business man, I dare say he felt the 
money would be no great inconvenience — and then there was 
always the magazine to be started, dear me ! Still he made 
love to her as if he was half afraid she would take him at his 
word — and he kept writing to Annie ! But Mrs. Shelton was 
of sterner stuff than the poetic Helen. She had made up her 
mind to marry Poe for reasons sufficient unto herself, and she 
would have done it had not fate intervened. She made her 
preparations like a thorough business woman, and strong- 
mindedly led the way toward the altar. The wedding ring 
was bought (I can hardly believe with Poe's money), and all 
things were in readiness for the happy event, when the poet 
wandered away on that luckless journey whose end was in 
another world. 

Mrs. Shelton wore mourning for him, and all her women 
friends told her it was wonderfully becoming. ... I 
think Annie's crape was at the heart. 

Edgar Allan Poe was a child in the hands of women, and 
that's the whole truth — a loving, weak, vain and irresponsi- 
ble child. This count in the indictment is the weakest of all. 
I should not have referred to it had I been writing a conven- 
tional essay. 




HE notion that Poe was mad has within late years 
received a quasi-scientific confirmation — at 
least the doctors have settled the matter to their 
own satisfaction. I therefore advert to it in 
order to dispose of the Poe indictment in full. 
My learned friend, Dr. William Lee Howard, of Balti- 
more (a town forever memorable to the lovers of the poet), 
sets out to prove that Edgar Allan Poe was not a drunkard in 
the ordinary sense (which is ordinarily believed), but was 
rather what the medical experts are now calling a psychopath ; 
in plain words, a madman. "He belongs," says the doctor, "to 
that class of psychopaths too long blamed and accused of 
vicious habits that are really symptoms of disease — a disease 
now recognized by neurologists as psychic epilepsy." The 
doctor fortifies his thesis with much learning of the same 
kind, and in conclusion he says: "The psychologist readily 
understands the reason for Poe's intensity, for his cosmic ter- 
ror and his constant dwelling upon the aspects of physical 
decay. He lived alternately a life of obsession and lucidity, 
and this duality is the explanation of his being so shamefully 
misunderstood — so highly praised, so cruelly blamed. In 
most of his weird and fantastic tales we can see the patient 
emerging from oblivion. We find in his case many of the 
primary symptoms of the psychopath — a disordered and dis- 
turbed comprehension of concepts, suspicion, and exagger- 
ated ideas of persecution." 



THE POE LEGEND 19 

These be words horrendous and mouth-filling, but surely 
I need not remind the erudite Dr. Howard that 

When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 
And proved it — 'twas no matter what he said. 

And I suspect Dr. Howard in coming, as he thinks, to the 
defence of Poe's reputation, has done the poet an ill service, 
though I doubt if he will influence any right-judging minds. 
Nor am I in sympathy with the doctor's ingenious argument 
that the most strongly marked products of Poe's genius are 
to be referred to a diseased mental and nervous condition; 
which is simply Nordau's contention that all genius is disease. 
According to this view, all men of great intellectual power — 
e. g., Nordau himself and Dr. William Lee Howard — are 
insane; and yet it is a fact that the madhouses are chiefly 
peopled with the average sort of human beings. 

No, the first of American poets was not mad because he 
wrote "The Raven," and "The House of Usher," and "Li- 
geia," and "The Red Death." These masterpieces indeed 
prove that he was at certain fortunate times in possession of 
that highest and most potential sanity, that mens divinior, 
from which true artistic creation results — always the rarest 
and most beautiful phenomenon in the world. 

Mad? I guess not! but no doubt he was thought to be 
cracked by the half of his acquaintance, for that is the trib- 
ute which mediocrity ever pays to genius. The small grocer 
folk and their kind about Fordham, as well as some more pre- 
tentious respectabilities, looked askance at the poor poet 
struggling with his burden and his vision; fighting his un- 
equal battle with fate and fortune. In much the same way, 
though with deeper aversion and contempt, he was regarded 



20 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

by the successful literary cliques of the day, especially the 
"New England School' ' of his detestation — those thrifty, 
cold-blooded, sagacious persons who made so much of their 
very moderate talents. Mr. W. D. Howells, the leading in- 
heritor of their spirit, has a poor notion of Poe. In short, 
our poet was that scandal and contradiction in his own day — 
a true genius ; and he remains an enigma to ours. 

But I do not think he was any more a psychopath or a 
madman than — bless me! — Dr. William Lee Howard him- 
self — though I will grant that, as we are now saying, several 
things got constantly on his nerves. And among these: 

Chronic poverty. 

Rejection of his literary claims. 

Success of his inferiors. 

The insolence of publishers. 

Humiliation of spirit. 

And — I must grant it — the agony induced by his occa- 
sional excesses and his forfeiture of self-respect. 

I do not argue that the misfortunes prove the genius, even 
though in Poe's case they seem to have been the penalty an- 
nexed to his extraordinary gifts — the curse of the malignant 
fairy. But with due respect to the learned authority several 
times referred to, and in spite of all the Bedlam science in the 
world, I hold to my faith that true genius is not the negation, 
but the affirmation of sanity. 

As for the literary smugs, to whom Poe is anathema be- 
cause he mas a genius and also a scandal, according to their 
moral code: is it not enough, gentlemen, that you are pros- 
perous, and respectable — and utterly unlike Poe? 




EXT to the subject of Poe's drinking habits, 
which you have to follow like a strong breath 
through every account of him that I have seen — 
his faithful biographers give most attention to 
his borrowings. Hence the typical Poe biog- 
raphy reads, as already suggested, like an indictment. 

Now, the fact is, poor Poe was as bad a borrower as he 
was a drinker — he meant well and heaven knows he tried 
hard enough in each capacity, but neither part fitted him, 
and in both he failed to rise to the dignity of the artist. He 
was truly a bum borrower (this is not a literary essay) . He 
never executed a "touch" with grace or finesse. Instead of 
going to his friends with endearing assurance, smiling like a 
May-day at the honor and pleasure he designed them, he 
put on his hat with the deep black band and went like an 
undertaker to conduct his own funeral. No wonder they 
threw him down ! But in truth he rarely had the courage to 
face his man, and so he sent that poor devoted Mrs. Clemm 
— that paragon of mothers-in-law for a poet ! — or else weak- 
ly relied on his powers of literary persuasion and courted cer- 
tain refusal by penning his modest request. Call this man a 
borrower! Why, he was a parody of Charles Lamb's idea 
that your true borrower, Alcibiades or Brinsley Sheridan, 
belongs to a superior kind of humanity, the Great Race — 
born to rule the rest. He never realized the greatness of the 
borrowing profession — never rose to it, to take a metaphor 
from the stage, but remained a mumping, fearful, calamity- 
inviting, graceless and hopeless, make-believe borrower to 
the last. 



22 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

For this his biographers are ashamed of him, as for his 
sprees, and this also has passed into the popular legend con- 
cerning Poe, of which the obscure dramatist (already re- 
ferred to) has availed himself. Neither the unknown drama- 
tist nor his biographers have deemed it worth while to ex- 
plain this phase of Poe's life — these are the facts and here 
are the letters to Kennedy, Griswold, White, Thomas, Gra- 
ham, Clark, Simms, Willis, et at. Can you make anything 
else of them? And another count of the indictment in re 
Edgar Allan Poe is proven. 

I am not writing a literary essay, but I must again lay 
stress on one thing, in extenuation of Poe's inveterate offence 
of borrowing from his friends — he did it very badly, so 
badly that this fact alone should excuse him in the eyes of 
the charitable. Let us also try to bear in mind that the most 
he could earn, after giving oath-bound guarantees as to so- 
briety, etc., was Ten Dollars a week — this was the sum for 
which Burton (the tragic Comedian) hired him and from 
which in a very short time the same Burton ruthlessly sepa- 
rated him. . The joke being that this same fat-headed Burton 
carried on the affair with a high show of regard for the dig- 
nity of the Literary Profession, outraged by Poe ! Ten Dol- 
lars a week! Why, do you know that our most popular 
author, Mr. Success G. Smith, is believed to earn about fifty 
thousand a year by his pen? That Mr. Calcium Give- 
emfitts, the fearless exposer of corruption in high places, is 
worrying along on a beggarly stipend of, say, thirty-five 
thousand? That the famous society novelist, Mrs. Tuxedo 
Jones, barely contrives to make ends meet on the same hard 



THE POE LEGEND 23 

terms ; and that a score of others might be named whose in- 
comes do not fall below twenty-five thousand? 

But, you say, does each and every one of these gifted and 
fortunate individuals make literature in the sense that Poe 
made it? My dear sir, these persons are all my intimate 
friends ; I admire their works next to my own, though I con- 
fess I do not read them so often. Therefore, to single out 
one of these distinguished and successful authors for praise 
would be invidious ; and, besides — I am not writing a literary 
essay. 

t^v ^* *5* 

LAST word as to Poe's enemies — those whom he 
made for himself and those who were called 
into being by his literary triumphs. Here again 
I think Poe failed to hit it off, as he might have 
done. Though he labored at the gentle art of 
making enemies with much diligence, he never utilized them 
with brilliant success in a literary way (most of the criticism 
which procured him his enemies is hack-writing, not litera- 
ture). For example, he did not make his enemies serve both 
his wit and reputation, as Heine so well knew how to do. 
The latter turned his foes into copy; throughout his life they 
were his chief literary asset, and I have no doubt that he 
almost loved them for the literature they enabled him to 
make. This is the most exquisite revenge upon a literary 
rival — to make him your pot-boiler and bread-winner as well 
as a feeder to your fame and glory. It was beyond Poe, and, 
therefore, the chronicle of his grudges has hardly more 
piquancy than the tale of his borrowings. 




24 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

But his biographers weary us with it, as if the matter were 
of real importance. Nonsense ! Our literary manners are 
doubtless improved since Poe's day; the brethren are surely 
not so hungry, and there is more fodder to go round ( I have 
said this is not a literary effort). Still the civility is rather 
assumed than real; there is much spiteful kicking of shins 
under the table; and private lampoons take the place of the 
old public personalities. I grant that authors are more gen- 
erous in their attitude toward one another than formerly, and 
the fact cannot be disputed that they are fervently sincere in 
their praise of — the dead ones. 

No, we shall not condemn Poe for the enemies he made. 
The printed word breeds hostility and aversion that the 
writer wots not of — yea, his dearest friends, scanning his 
page with jealous eye, shall take rancor from his most guile- 
less words and cherish it in their bosoms against him. Write, 
and your friends will love you till they hate you ; for there is 
no fear and jealousy in the world like those that lurk in the 
printed word. Write then, write deeply enough, down to 
the truth of your own soul, below the shams of phrase and 
convention, below your insincerities of self — and you shall 
have enemies to your heart's desire. The man who could 
print much and still make no enemies, has never yet appeared 
on this planet. Certainly it was not he who struggled des- 
perately for the poorest living in and about New York some 
fifty years ago; who saw his young wife die in want and 
misery, with the horror of officious charity at the door; who 
not long afterward and in a kindly dream (as I must think 
it) left all this coil of trouble and sorrow behind him, be- 
queathing to immortality the fame of Edgar Poe. 



In Re Colonel IngcraolL 




N THIS country freedom is a legal fiction; there 
are varying degrees of toleration, but no liberty 
in the true sense. 

In England and Prussia, both countries ruled 
by divine right, there is more personal liberty 
than in this Republic, which was founded upon the ironical 
premise that all men are born free and equal. 

The battle for freedom goes on eternally — when we stop 
fighting we slide back into servitude. 

In many States of the Union there are laws on the statute 
books that penalize liberty of thought and speech. 

These statutes are mostly derived from Colonial times and 
the barbarous intolerance of the Old World. They are an 
organic link between us and the British tyranny from which 
our patriot fathers appealed to the sword. No statesman or 
legislator has the courage to demand that they be wiped 
from the statute-books. It is supposed that the moral sense 
of the people is somehow concerned in their being kept there 
— like theology, which no one is able to define, but which 
many people take to be the highest and most valuable kind 
of knowledge. 

So these cruel old laws are not disturbed by pious legis- 
lators, who would make no bones at all of trading in public 
franchises, or of acting on any proposition with the "immoral 
majority." Hypocrisy and fraud respect in these shameful 
statutes the "wisdom" of aur ancestors, and still affect to see 



26 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

in them a safeguard for religion. Hypocrisy and fraud unite 
to keep them on the law-books where they lie, asleep it may 
be, but ready-fanged and poisoned should they be invoked 
at any time to do their ancient office. Many people would be 
glad to have these infamous laws erased from the statute- 
books, but they do nothing about it. The public sense of 
hypocrisy stands in the way. Legislators fear the protest of 
what is called "organized religion." Liberty continues to be 
disgraced in the house of her friends. 

New Jersey has laws of this kind. Eighteen years ago one 
of them was waked from its long sleep in order to punish a 
man who had exercised the right of free speech. By a strange 
contradiction — the result of yoking the Era of Liberty with 
the Age of Oppression — this right of free speech is guaran- 
teed in the Constitution of New Jersey, under which the old 
cruel Colonial law is allowed to operate. That is to say, the 
Constitution both guarantees and penalizes the same privi- 
lege — a beautiful example of consistency arising from respect 
for the "wisdom of our ancestors." 

The trial attracted universal attention because the bravest 
and ablest advocate of free speech in our time appeared for 
the defense. Outside of the great principle involved, there 
was little in the case to engage the interest or sympathies of 
Colonel Ingersoll. The defendant was an obscure ex-min- 
ister named Reynolds, who had gone over to infidelity. Re- 
ligion, it must be granted, lost less than Reynolds, who seems 
to have been unable to maintain himself as a preacher of lib- 
eral doctrine. No doubt many ministers have profited by his 
example and stayed where they were — the free thought 
standard of ability is a good deal higher than the evangelical. 



IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 27 

This Reynolds printed and circulated some literature about 
the Bible. It was merely puerile and foolish, but some people 
who looked upon Reynolds as a nuisance (which I fear he 
was) and wanted to punish him, thought it a good case for 
the old Colonial statute against blasphemy. Accordingly 
they invoked it, and hence the trial. 

The result of this now famous trial for blasphemy proves 
that a law on the statute-book, no matter how antiquated, 
bigoted and absurd — and this was all three in the superlative 
degree — outweighs with a jury the utmost logic and elo- 
quence of the ablest advocate. Such is the superstition of 
law and such the desirability of having on our statute-books 
these bequests from the blind and tyrannous bigotry of the 
Old World. 

We need not condemn the twelve Jersey jurymen for sin- 
ning against light — darkness was there in the law and de- 
manded judgment at their hands. Of course, they enjoyed 
the Colonel's eloquence; his marvelous pleading; his logic 
that built up and buttressed a whole structure of argument, 
while his oratory ravished them; his flashes of wit that dis- 
armed every prejudice; his persuasive power that almost con- 
vinced them they were free men with no slightest obliga- 
tion to the servile past. Yes, it must have been like a wonder- 
ful play to these simple Jerseymen. No doubt they congrat- 
ulated themselves that they were privileged spectators, see- 
ing and hearing it for nothing; and they talked or will talk 
of it to their dying day. I think myself it was one of the 
most effective and powerful addresses ever made to a jury — 
one of the finest appeals ever uttered on behalf of liberty — 



28 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

and it will be honored as it deserves when this nation shall be 
truly free. 

I daresay some of these Jerseymen were wavering when 
the Colonel sat down at last — how could they help it? But 
the prosecutor reminded them (without any eloquence) of 
their obligations to city, county and State. Above all, there 
is the Law — what are you going to do about that, gentle- 
men? No matter whether it was passed some two hundred 
years ago and carried over from Oppression to Liberty — no 
matter whether it was made for a state of civilization, or 
barbarism, if you please, which we have outgrown — there it 
stands, the Law which safeguards the Church and the Home 
— the law which you are sworn to maintain. 

Something like this, no doubt, the prosecutor must have 
said, but his remarks were few — he did not care to invite a 
comparison. Besides, he knew his jurymen. 

Colonel Ingersoll had made a speech that will live forever. 

He lost his case. 

New Jersey lost an opportunity. 

X&& X0& tS^ 

GREAT many people contend that we now enjoy 
in this country as much liberty (or toleration) 
as is good for us. To aim at the full measure 
which Colonel Ingersoll advocated is, in the 
opinion of these people, to advance the standard 
of Anarchy. 

By this reasoning a man who is only half or three-quar- 
ters well is better off than one in perfect health. 
Complete freedom is complete well-being. 




IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 29 

Colonel Ingersoll was the foremost champion in our time 
of the rights of the human spirit. 

It has been urged that he spent the best part of his life 
threshing out old theological straw, fighting battles that had 
been thoroughly fought out long before his day. Singularly 
enough, this position is usually taken by persons attached to 
the theological system against which Ingersoll waged a 
truceless war. There may be some virtue in the argument, 
but it surely is not that of consistency. 

Let us be fair. Ingersoll was no mere echo and imitator of 
the great liberals who preceded him. He had a message of 
his own to his own generation. He was the best-equipped, 
most formidable and persistent advocate of the liberal prin- 
ciple which this country, at least, has ever known; and it is 
extremely doubtful if his equal as a popular propagandist 
was to be found anywhere. 

He took new ground. He carried the flag farther than 
any of his predecessors. He fought without compromise, 
neither seeking nor giving quarter. He believed in the sa- 
credness of his cause — the holy cause of liberty. His was no 
tepid devotion, no Laodicean fervor, no timid acquiescence 
dictated by reason and half denied by fear. 

That uncertain allegiance of the soul which Macaulay 
describes as the "paradise of cold hearts," was not for him. 
The temper of his zeal for liberty can be likened only to a 
consuming flame; it burned with ever increasing ardor 
through all the years of his long life; it was active up to the 
very moment when jealous Death touched his eloquent lips 
with silence. 



3 o PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

It was a grand passion, and, like every grand passion, it 
had grand results. 

Heine has said that no man becomes greatly famous with- 
out passion ; that it is the mark by which we know the inspired 
man from the mere servant or spectator of events. 

I see this mark in Abraham Lincoln — in the Gettysburg 
speech, in the Proclamation and some of the Messages. The 
divine passion that announces a man with a mission and a 
destiny beyond his fellows. 

I see this mark in Robert G. Ingersoll. I have lately read 
the greater part of his work — lectures, speeches, controver- 
sial writings— and the cumulative sense I take from it is that 
of wonder at the passion of the man. Perhaps it never found 
better, never attained higher expression than in these words : 

"I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for 
individual independence. I plead for the rights of labor and 
of thought. I plead for a chainless future. Let the ghosts 
go — justice remains. Let them disappear — men and women 
and children are left. Let the monsters fade away — the world 
is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its seasons of 
smiles and frowns, its spring of leaf and bud, its summer of 
shade and flower and murmuring stream, its autumn with the 
laden boughs, when the withered banners of the corn are 
still and gathered fields are growing strangely wan; while 
death, poetic death, with hands that color what they touch, 
weaves in the autumn wood her tapestries of gold and brown. 

"The world remains with its winters and homes and fire- 
sides, where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. Let 
the ghosts go — we will worship them no more. 

"Man is greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grand- 






IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 31 

er than all the creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the 
great sea, and these creeds, and books, and religions are but 
the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and these religions 
and dogmas and theories are but the mists and clouds chang- 
ing continually, destined finally to melt away. 

"That which is founded on slavery, and fear, and ignor- 
ance cannot endure." 



& 



T IS agreed by persons who make it a virtue 
never to say what they really think, that Colonel 
Ingersoll was without influence upon the intelli- 
gent thought of the day — by which intelligent 
thought they mean themselves. 
If this be true, we lack an explanation of the fact that his 
books and lectures are selling by the thousands, both in this 
country and in England. If the testimony of the book-stalls 
amounts to anything, then the great Agnostic did not cast 
his "seed of perdition" upon barren ground. Whether for 
right or wrong, whether for good or evil, his word is march- 
ing on. 

From the Silence that comes to all men he has gained a 
higher claim upon our attention, a more valid right to plead. 
We remember that he was faithful unto death. With the 
cessation of that defiant personality, about which so long 
raged the din of controversy, men have leave to study his 
best thought in the dry light of reason. He that is dead over- 
cometh. 

During his life Colonel Ingersoll gave and took many 



32 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

hard blows — that is, he fought his adversaries with the 
weapons of their choice. 

Often it seemed to those who were in sympathy with 
much that he said, with much that he contended for, that he 
might have used softer words ; that he might have dealt less 
brutally with inherited beliefs and prejudices; in short, that 
he might have employed rosewater instead of vitriol. 

The answer to this is, Colonel Ingersoll fought without 
compromise. From his first public utterance he made his 
position plain. He never faltered, shuffled or equivocated. 
He knew that mutual compliments cloud the issue; he asked 
none, gave none. 

But the fact really is, he was far kinder and more char- 
itable toward his adversaries than they were toward him. 
Besides, they had a great advantage in unkindness : they were 
always sending him to their hell- — and he had no hell to send 
them to ! 

However, I do not believe that Colonel Ingersoll would 
have fared much better at the hands of the clergy had he, 
while professing infidelity, made his declaration of unfaith in 
the mildest and most colorless terms. Euphemism would not 
have saved the Colonel, and this he well knew, having one of 
the most logical minds in the world. 

No infidel was ever so tender toward the sensibilities of 
the orthodox as Ernest Renan, who, though he left the altar, 
yet (as Ingersoll shrewdly said) carried the incense a great 
part of his journey with him. 

Renan's attitude toward the old faith which he had re- 
nounced was that of a sentimental iconoclast — but an icono- 
clast, for all that. He wrote his "Life of Jesus" with a kind 



IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 33 

of pious infidelity, coloring it with such euphemism, handling 
it with such precaution, that some persons took it for an 
orthodox account. He discloses his motive in the prefaces 
but almost suppresses it in the body of the book. His criti- 
cism is the best in the world, his romance no better than 
Chateaubriand's — a woman said that the "Life of Jesus" 
read as if it was going to end with a marriage ! In my poor 
opinion, one or two chapters of Renan's "Recollections" is 
worth the "Life of Jesus." 

Renan loved the grand old Church which had educated 
him, as his "dearest foe." His mind had been formed by 
contact with her at a hundred points. The poetry of her 
ritual, the pomp of her service, the grandeur of her titles, 
the majesty of her spiritual dominion, never quite lost their 
power to impress his soul — even when he was prophesying 
that the days of her greatness were numbered. He spoke of 
the clergy always with respect, often with compliment, de- 
claring in his latest book that he had never known a bad 
priest. He abhorred all coarseness, all invective, all vulgar- 
ity, all violence. b Nothing common, low or brutal was ever 
suffered to mar the translucent mirror of his perfect style. 
In theory a democrat, he had the mental manners which are 
fostered by a clerical aristocracy. Every faculty of his mind 
paid homage to the Church, except his reason. 

Renan never lost his feeling of reverence for the sacred 
mysteries of the faith in which his youth was cradled — but 
he wrote the "Prayer on the Acropolis." He rebuked Strauss 
and Feuerbach for the ruthless way in which they attacked 
the Christian legend — he pleaded for tenderness in demol- 
ishing a religion which had been the hope of the world. He 



34 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

confessed that he never could wholly put off the cassock, and 
he seemed like an unfrocked bishop on the heights of science. 
If ever an infidel deserved charity at the hands of the clergy, 
that infidel was Renan. 

Did he get it? — not even Voltaire was assailed with a 
greater virulence of ecclesiastical rancor, the most infernal 
malice ever planted in the heart of man. 

The ecclesiastical spirit is the same in all ages. It crucified 
Jesus of Nazareth, it burned Giordano Bruno. When Serve- 
tus writhed at the stake in his death agony, Calvin, his mur- 
derer, drew near, saluted him as the son of the devil and. 
piously committed his soul to hell. 

Renan was cursed and slandered with that special ingenu- 
ity which has always belonged to the Church, and the priests 
whom he was in the habit of complimenting, with great fer- 
vor saluted him as the Anti-Christ ! 

Colonel Ingersoll's reasoning was good. Compliments are 
vain in an irreconcilable conflict. 



JK 



OST speeches are not literature — they do not read 
as they were heard, as they were spoken. Lack- 
ing the living voice, the speaking eye, the per- 
sonality from which they derived their force, 
they seem cold, inanimate, without that vital 
principle which is the product of genius and art. 

The orator's triumphs are usually short-lived, like those 
of the actor. They are the children of the time, not of the 
eternities. 




IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 35 

But there are exceptions, though rare, and among these we 
may reckon the best speeches of Colonel Ingersoll. 

Our American literature has nothing better of their kind 
than the Decoration Day Oration, the lectures on Ghosts, 
Orthodoxy, Superstition, Individuality, Liberty for Man, 
Woman and Child, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Humboldt, 
Thomas Paine, and some others. 

These are so vital, so charged with intellectual power, so 
instinct with a passionate love of truth and justice, so elo- 
quent and logical, so clear and convincing — above all, so 
readable — that they can afford to dispense with the living 
voice ; that is, they are in a true sense literature. 

I doubt if this enviable distinction belongs in equal meas- 
ure to the work of any other American author. 

The explanation is, that Colonel Ingersoll was an artist as 
well as an orator : he knew that without the preserving touch 
of art, the most impassioned oratory soon goes back to com- 
mon air. He was one of the great masters of our English 
speech, never seeking the abstruse or the obsolete, believing 
that the tongue of Shakespeare was adequate to every neces- 
sity of argument, every excursion of fancy, every sentiment 
of poetry, every demand of oratory. 

His skill in construction, in antithesis, in balancing pe- 
riods, in leading up to the lofty climax which crowned the 
whole, was that of a wizard of speech. He never fell short 
or came tardy off — his means were always adequate to his 
ends; and the close of every speech was like a strain of 
music. Rich as his mind was, immense his intellectual re- 
sources, undaunted the bravery of his spirit, there was yet 



36 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

manifest in all his work the wise husbandry of genius. His 
power never ran to excess; never dwindled to impotence. 

Nature, too, is economical and dislikes to double her gifts : 
yet this man was a great poet as well as a great orator. I 
have quoted above a paragraph from one of his orations, 
which is the fine gold of sterling poetry. 

Charles Lamb tells us that "Prose hath her harmonies no 
less than Verse," and we know that the speech of every true 
orator is rhythmic. It was eminently so with Colonel Inger- 
soll, who, like Dickens, often fell unconsciously into blank 
verse. Here are a few examples taken at random ; and first 
this bit of what we are now calling "nature poetry:" 

"The rise and set of sun, 
The birth and death of day, 
The dawns of silver and the dusks of gold, 
The wonders of the rain and snow, 
The shroud of winter and 
The many-colored robes of spring; 
The lonely moon with nightly loss or gain, 
The serpent lightning and the thunder's voice, 
The tempest's fury and the breath of morn, 
The threat of storm and promise of the bow." 

Nothing could excel in beauty and metrical grace this de- 
scription of the old classic myths: 

"They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous desire; 
Made tawny Summer's billowed breast the throne and home 
of Love; 



IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 



37 



Filled Autumn's arms with sun-kissed grapes and gathered 

sheaves ; 
And pictured Winter as a weak old king 
Who felt, like Lear, upon his withered face, 
Cordelia's tears." 

This on Shakespeare, reveals the poet in the orator : 

"He knew the thrills and ecstasies of love, 
The savage joys of hatred and revenge. 
He heard the hiss of envy's snakes 
And watched the eagles of ambition soar. 
There was no hope that did not put its star above his 

head — 
No fear he had not felt — 
No joy that had not shed its sunshine on his face." 



The critics, I am aware, make this kind of writing a fault 
in prose, but we should be glad to get real poetry, wherever 
we may find it. Colonel Ingersoll's greatest distinction as a 
poet is, that he never fails to interest us — the regular metre- 
mongers may well envy him. 




LIKE his distinct literary style — the style of his 
miscellanies, of his controversial papers, of his 
occasional bits of wisdom and fancy and criti- 
cism. Perhaps the thoroughly human side of 
the man is best seen in these unrelated efforts — 
these vagrant children of his mind. You know that this man 
thought before he took the pen in hand. He writes without 
pretence, without the vices of the literary habit, without arti- 
fice or evasion, — clearly, frankly, as a gentleman should 
speak. In written controversy he was relentless in his logic, 
— pressing the point home, — but unfailing in courtesy. As 
he himself would have said, his mental manners were good 
— they were at any rate "sweetness and light" compared 
with those of his adversaries. 

He did not profess to love his enemies, yet he treated 
them more humanely than many who made that profession. 
We are never to forget that the chief article of his of- 
t ending was, that he made war upon the dogma of an ever- 
lasting hell. 

In his controversies he was never worsted and his vic- 
tories seem not less due to his own fairness in argument and 
tenacity of logic than to the weakness and confusion of his 
opponents. The natural and the supernatural can not main- 
tain a profitable argument. They can never agree and, strict- 
ly speaking, one can not overcome the other — they occupy 
separate realms. 

It is useless for a man who believes in miracles to argue 
with a man who does not — a miracle and a fact are in the na- 
ture of things irreconcilable. 



IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 39 

Renan said to the theologians, "Come, gentlemen, let us 
have one miracle here before the savants in Paris — that will 
end the dispute forever." He asked in vain — miracles are 
no longer granted for the conversion of infidels, and if they 
occur at all, it is before witnesses whose faith predisposes 
them to belief. It may be hazarded that no one ever believed 
in a miracle who did not wish to believe in it. 

From a human standpoint — we really don't know of any 
other — the honors of controversy usually fell to Colonel In- 
gersoll. His apparent victories were, of course, easily waived 
by those who believed that they had miraculous truth on 
their side. Yet they must have regretted that the supernat- 
ural can be so ill defended. That all the advantage of rea- 
son would seem to be with the enemy of light. That one 
who can make himself understood should prevail over the 
champion of Divine truth, which is in its nature incompre- 
hensible. That is should be so hard to square reason with 
revelation, fact with fable, method with miracle, dreams 
with demonstrations. 

Of all these tourneys of skill and wit and logic, Colonel 
Ingersoll is seen at his best in his reply to Gladstone. Per- 
haps nothing that he ever did more thoroughly certifies the 
power and keenness of his mind, the bed-rock of his convic- 
tions. He was like an athlete rejoicing in his strength; mer- 
ciful to his adversary, as feeling that the victory was sure; 
always conscious of his power, but ruling himself with per- 
fect poise. The one touch of malice that he allowed himself 
was when he quoted for Mr. Gladstone's benefit the saying of 
Aristotle, that "clearness is the virtue of style:" this ar- 
row pierced the heart of the British behemoth. 



4 o PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

In truth, Mr. Gladstone, the man of many languages, 
the world-famed orator, the u most learned layman in Eu- 
rope," appeared at a ludicrous disadvantage in his duel with 
the American. He tried to write in the bishop's voice, to 
overawe his adversary with Greek and Latin quotations, 
omitting to give the English equivalent. He begged the 
question, floundered about it, did everything but argue it, 
and finally took refuge behind the "exuberance of his own 
verbosity." Colonel Ingersoll, cool, relentless, urbane, in- 
flexible, asked only for the facts : Mr. Gladstone, flustered, 
irritated, conscious of his weakness, had none to give and 
raised a cloud of words. In this world Mr. Gladstone 
never answered Colonel Ingersoll's reply — perhaps he is oc- 
cupying himself with a rejoinder in the next. 



|OLONEL Ingersoll has been so slandered and de- 
famed by the friends of orthodox religion that 
many people have no just idea of the man or of 
the principles for which he contended. Slander 
is too often the favorite weapon of those who 
love their enemies as themselves. It was used so effectively 
against Voltaire that even at this late day many liberal Christ- 
ians are afraid to read him. 

Let us see. Did Ingersoll say there is no God? 
No; he said he did not know. 
What did he deny as to God? 

He denied the existence of the personal Jewish God — the 
Jehovah of the Hebrew Scriptures. 




IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 41 

He denied and repudiated the dogma of an eternal hell, 
said to have been made by this Jehovah in order to gratify 
his revenge upon the great majority of the human race. 

Did he attack Christianity? 

He attacked only the evil part of it, in so far as it justified 
and continued the curses of the Old Testament. He made a 
distinction between the real and the theological Christ; the 
first he honored as a great moral teacher and a martyr of 
freedom, killed by the orthodox priests of his day; the sec- 
ond he denied and repudiated as a creation of men. 

Did he believe in a Hereafter? 

He believed that no one could know whether there is or is 
not a future life of the soul. But he was not without the 
hope of immortality which has in all ages cheered and forti- 
fied the heart of man. 

It follows from all this that he did not accept the Revela- 
tion of the Hebrew Bible, its cosmogony, geology or moral- 
ity; nor the New Testament with its Scheme of Atonement 
and threat of Eternal Damnation — God suffering in his own 
person for the sins of the world, yet condemning the far 
greater number of his children to everlasting pain. 

What positive effect had his example and teaching? 

It liberalized the creeds in spite of themselves. 

It made the preaching of hell unpopular. 

It made for sanity in religion and enlarged the province 
of honest doubt. 

It caused men to think more of the simple human virtues 
and less of the theological ones. 

There is no doubt at all that it saved many from the mad- 



42 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

house who might have accused themselves of committing the 
Unpardonable Sin. 

It helped to make better husbands, kinder fathers, more 
loyal and loving sons. 

It was a great step toward freedom and light. It enlarged 
the horizon of hope — it advanced the standard of liberty. 

Was his teaching in any degree or sense offensive? 

Only to those who were committed to one or other of the 
creeds derived from the Jewish Bible. Still, he did them 
good, though they would not admit it. 

Colonel Ingersoll was a free man, talking in a country 
where all are presumed to be free, yet his courage, more than 
the laws, protected him. 

He upheld public and private morality and was himself an 
exemplar of both. 

He loved only one woman as his wife and lived with her 
in perfect honor and fidelity. He loved his children and was 
idolized by them. 

His abilities and services reflected honor upon the state. 

It is agreed that but for his religious views, he might have 
reached the greatest honor in the nation's gift. As it is, he 
has gained a place in the Republic of Intellect to which few 
of our Presidents may aspire. 

His crime was, that he had elected to exercise his reason, 
had interrogated Revelation, put Moses in the witness-box 
and asked for the facts. 




OLONEL Ingersoll belongs with the select com- 
pany of the great Americans. 

He is of the fellowship of Jefferson and 
Franklin, of Lincoln and Sumner. His patriot- 
ism was second only to his passion for universal 
liberty. He loved his country beyond everything except free- 
dom. He was not a fireside patriot — the temper of his devo- 
tion had been proved in the baptism of battle. His patriotic 
speeches rank with the best in our literature: the Vision of 
War is as high an utterance as Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech 
and as surely immortal. 

He was a great American, loving liberty, fraternity, equal- 
ity. He hated the spirit of Caste which he saw rising among 
our people, and he struck at it with all the force of his hon- 
est anger. 

He despised the worship of titles among the rich, their 
tuft-hunting, aping of aristocratic airs and mean prostration 
before the self-styled nobility of the Old World. To him 
the most loathsome object in the world was an American 
ashamed of his country. 

He urged that the representatives of republics should have 
precedence at Washington. He condemned the flummery of 
our diplomatic etiquette, the foolish kow-towing designed to 
flatter the ambassadors of servile nations. 

His patriotism was purer than that of our Christian states- 
men who wish to subjugate in the name of liberty — to ex- 
pand in territory and contract in honor. 

He was an individualist, believing that equal rights and 
equal opportunities hold the solution of every social problem. 



44 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

He saw no evil in wealth, save the abuse of it, and he did 
not think it a virtue to be poor. 

He believed that everyone was entitled to comfort, well- 
being, happiness in this world. He denied that God has pur- 
posely divided his children into rich and poor; he saw in this 
the teaching of a false religious system which has sanctioned 
every oppression and injustice, and has cursed the earth with 
misery. 

He regarded pauperism not as a proof of the special favor 
of God, but as an indictment of man. 

He was a lover of justice, of mercy, of humanity. He 
was a true friend of the toiling millions and in their behalf 
pleaded for a working day of eight hours. Christianity had 
long suffered it, but he was unwilling that a single over-bur- 
dened creature should "curse God and die." 

He pleaded for the abolition of the death penalty, that 
relic of savagery. He hated all forms of cruelty and vio- 
lence, but especially those that claim the sanction of law. He 
denounced the whipping post in Delaware — and Delaware 
replied by a threat to indict him for blasphemy. 

He pleaded for the abolition of poverty and drunkenness, 
for the fullest liberation of woman, for the rights of the 
child. 

His great heart went out in sympathy to every thing that 
suffers — to the dumb animals, beaten and over-laden; to the 
feathered victims of caprice and cruelty. 

The circle of this man's philanthropy was complete. He 
filled the measure of patriotism, of civic duty, of the sacred 
relations of husband and father, of generosity and kindness 
toward his fellow men. But he had committed treason 



IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 45 

against the Unknown, and this, in spite of the fame and 
success which his talents commanded, made of him a social 
Pariah. The herd admired and envied his freedom, but for 
the most part, they gave him the road and went by on the 
other side. 



This country is freer and better for the life of Colonel 
Ingersoll. 

There is more light, more air in the prison-house of the- 
ology. 

God may be a guess, but man is a certainty; men are think- 
ing more of their obligations toward those about them — the 
weak, the helpless, the fallen, — and less about securing for 
themselves a halo and a harp in the New Jerusalem. 

Ingersoll's great lesson that men can not love one another 
if they believe in a God of hate, is bearing fruit. 

The hypocrite shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Truth will yet compel all the churches to cease libeling 
God and to honor humanity. . . . 

The great man whose worth and work I have barely 
glanced at in these pages, said bravely, that he cared less for 
the freedom of religion than for the Religion of Freedom. 
When that larger light shall flood the world — and not until 
then — his services to the cause of Truth, of Liberty and Hu- 
manity will be fitly honored. 

As for his literary testament, I find it easy to believe that 
many a noble sentence winged with the utmost felicity of 
speech, many a fine sentiment, the fruit of his kindlier 
thought, many a tender word spoken to alleviate the sorrow 



46 



PALMS OF PAPYRUS 



of death, will long remain. Even the professed critics who 
make so small ado of the Colonel's literary merits, may well 
envy him the noble essay on Shakespeare, the more powerful 
one on Voltaire, or the beautiful memorial tribute to Walt 
Whitman. And it may be that "so long as love kisses the lips 
of death," so long shall men and women, in the nighted 
hour of grief and loss, bless the name of him who touched 
the great heart of humanity in that high and unmatched de- 
liverance at his brother's grave. . . . 

From a sunken Syrian tomb long antedating the Christian 
era, Ernest Renan brushed away the dust and found in- 
scribed thereon the single word, 

"Courage!" 



Richard Cttagncr'e Romance. 




| HE story of the man of genius who finds inspir- 
ation in another man's wife is not a new one, 
and it may even be called trite, but it is one to 
which the world always lends a willing ear. 
This is the story revealed in the recently pub- 
lished English version of the letters of Richard Wagner to 
Mathilde Wesendonck. In Germany, sweet land of senti- 
ment, the book has reached the twentieth edition and is gen- 
erally acclaimed as a true classic. In Germany, also, the al- 
leged Platonic motive of the letters, elsewhere looked at 
askance, is easily admitted, since, as is well known to the 
nightingales and the lindens, a German lover will pursue an 
ardent courtship through a dozen years without daring once 
to put an arm around his divinity's waist. Art and love are 
a great patience in Germany. 

They were surely so in the case of Richard Wagner; and 
it is characteristic of the Teuton, that he has left the world 
in doubt as to whether his patience was ever rewarded. 

The doubt is indeed the chief provocation of these letters 
(outside of Germany), and furnishes the artistic motive by 
which they will endure. 

Or, to put the matter plainly, the other maris wife sup- 
plies the interest of this book. As of many others in the 
biography of greatness. 

Think you had these letters been addressed to Frau Wag- 
ner, that all the chaste nightingales of Germany would now 



48 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

be tuning in their praise? Or that our own sentimentalists, 
with the unsexed Corybantes of music, would be swelling 
such a chorus of acclaim? Would the world be eager to 
identify Frau Wagner with the conception of "Isolde," and 
should we be hearing all this patter about ideal union of 
souls, spiritual passion, etc., etc.? Not so! — the world will 
not tolerate the indecency of a man of genius loving his wife 
and personifying her in the creations of his art. 

There is not a single truly famous book in the world's lit- 
erature, of letters written by a man of genius to his wife. 

The letters are always written to some other woman and, 
preferably, some other man's wife. Why this should be so, 
only the good Lord knows who made us as we are. 

Poor Penelope keeps house, often red-eyed and sad, during 
the excursions of genius; she treasures up with a broken- 
hearted care and stores away in a lavender-scented drawer 
with the early love-letters (of which the genius is now 
ashamed) curt messages on postal cards — hurry-up requests 
for clean linen or an extra "nighty"; express tags speaking 
eloquently of some cheap gift by which the great man dis- 
charged the obligation of writing (preserved by the simple 
soul because he had scrawled her name upon them) ; and 
perhaps a small packet of letters that deal wholly with his 
ideas of domestic government, usually couched in a peevish 
tone and with a hard selfishness of intention that strangely 
contrasts with the man's meditated, public revelation of self 
— not a flower of the heart in them all, as poor Penelope, 
starving for a word of love, sees through her dropping teats. 

Now these things have some value to a neglected wife, but 



RICHARD WAGNER'S ROMANCE 49 

they can not usefully be worked up in the biography of a man 
of genius. 

What wonder that Penelope takes into her tender bosom 
the subtle demon of jealousy, becomes a shrew and a scold, 
and presently — goaded by the man's cold and steady refusal 
to satisfy her by giving her the love which she knows with 
a woman's sure instinct is being secretly lavished upon anoth- 
er — what wonder, I say, that Penelope under such madden- 
ing provocation, finding herself a cheated and unloved wife, 
becomes that favorite handiwork of the Devil on this earth 
— a good woman turned into a Fury ! 

And the beauty of it is, that at this moment she sets out to 
justify, in the wrong-headed fashion of a woman who knows 
that she can take her marriage certificate to Heaven with 
her, — the infidelity of her husband. 

He, being a man of genius, easily gets the sympathy of the 
world — especially of all good and virtuous women, every 
one of whom feels that she would have been able to satisfy 
the gifted person and keep him properly straight. And the 
great man adds to the laurel of fame the crown of domestic 
martyrdom. 

Of course, the injured wife might have played her game 
better, but it was not in the cards for her to win, — having 
married a genius. 



So it has come to be an axiom that the artistic tempera- 
ment disqualifies a man for the sober state of matrimony; 
and many are the cases cited to prove it, from the wife of 



SO PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Socrates to Jane Welsh Carlyle or Frau Wagner. The woes 
of the unhappily mated genius clamor down the ages like 
the harsh echoes of a family row before the policeman 
reaches the corner. Also they make a large figure in what is 
called polite literature, especially as the sorely tried genius 
finds in the sorrows of his hearth a strong incentive to the 
production of copy. Hence the thing is not without its com- 
pensations, and the lovers of gossip, who are always the 
chief patrons of literature, do not seek their food in vain. 

I suspect that the matter of vanity has much to do with 
cooking the domestic troubles — his word is "tragedy" ! — of 
the genius. It is very hard to domesticate the species, and 
wonderful is the arrogance which the notion of genius will 
breed in the homeliest man, causing him to look with easy 
contempt on the beautiful woman who perhaps married him 
out of pity. The artist is the peacock among husbands — his 
lofty soul, his majestic port, his rainbow plumage and even, 
as he thinks, the beauty of his voice — that top note especial- 
ly! — move him to a measureless disdain of the annoyingly 
constant, unvaried and tiresome hero-worship of his plain 
little mate^ — it is quite curious how, after a time, he can not 
see her beauty. To be sure, she has her home uses, and very 
convenient at times they are, even to the most glorious of 
peacocks ; but he is for the Cosmos and must not limit his re- 
splendency to a narrow poultry-yard — go to, woman ! And 
there you are. 

Then, of course, the artist must always be in quest of new 
sensations, — in other words, must feed his genius, to which 
satiety is death; and it seems to be agreed that such sensa- 
tions and experiences are only to be had from other women, 



RICHARD WAGNER'S ROMANCE 51 

or at least, some other woman — and how are you going to 
get away from that? 

I have heard of a certain man, of coarse fibre, who would 
have given his soul to be thought an artist; who plotted, 
asleep and awake, during long years, to get rid of his law- 
ful wife and take on a woman he believed to be his affinity. 
The man's passionate desire to work this wrong gave him 
a kind of power and eloquence which, strange to say, failed 
him when at last he had succeeded in carrying out his pur- 
pose. And then, so gossip ran, he wished to win the old 
love back again (coupled in his memory with both unrest 
and power), but that, of course, was hopeless; so that verily 
the last state of this man was worse than the first. 

All of which is not without bearing upon the story of Rich- 
ard Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck. 

I am not concerned to upset the Platonic theory, so dear 
to German sentimentalists, of the love-affair between the 
great Wagner and the wife of Herr Wesendonck. People 
will judge according to the evidence and their private feel- 
ings. It must be allowed that there are expressions in the 
letters that would go far toward establishing a crim. con. in 
the case of any but a German like Wagner and a master 
sentimentalist at that. Such a passage as this for example: 

u Once more, that thou couldst hurl thyself on every con- 
ceivable sorrow of the world to say to me, 'I love thee,' re- 
deemed me and won for me that 'solemn pause' whence my 
life has gained another meaning. 

"But that state divine indeed was only to be won at cost 
of all the griefs and pains of love — we have drunk them to 
their very dregs ! And now, after suffering every sorrow, be- 



52 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

ing spared no grief, now must the quick of that higher life 
show clear what we have won through all the agony of those 
birth-throes." 

I repeat, only a German sentimentalist could hold such 
language without compelling an obvious conclusion. The 
fact that in the face of this and similarly passionate avowals, 
public opinion in Germany absolves the lovers of any posi- 
tive guilt in their relations, is a high tribute to that national 
virtue which was anciently celebrated by Tacitus and more 
recently by Heinrich Heine. 

It is the greater pity that the English translation should 
have been made by a gushing, lymphatic person, one W. 
Ashton Ellis, who instead of suffering the letters to speak 
for themselves, writes me a sloppy preface wherein he seeks 
to clear Frau Wesendonck's character, in advance, and there- 
by naturally awakens the reader's doubts. I protest but for 
this marplot fellow I should have set it all down to the ac- 
count of German sentimentalism and have laid the book 
aside without hearing anything worse than the nightingale in 
the linden, pouring forth his soul in the enchanted moonlight 
of German poesy. But now it is spoiled for me by such 
twaddle as this: 

"This placid, sweet Madonna, the perfect emblem of a 
pearl, not opal, her eyes still dreaming of Nirvana, — no ! em- 
phatically no ! she could not once have been swayed by car- 
nal passion. In these letters all is pure and spiritual, a Dante 
and a Beatrice; so must it have been in their intercourse." 

This illustrates how the defense is so often fatal in mat- 
ters of literary biography. And yet I have not heard of a 
literary man wise enough to ask that neither his memory nor 
his acts should ever be defended. 



RICHARD WAGNER'S ROMANCE $3 

Many a small person contrives to attract a moment's no- 
tice by defending the silent great. 
Fame has no more subtle irony. 



Richard Wagner met Mathilde Wesendonck in 1852 
when he was forty years old and she twenty-four. He had al- 
ready written "Rienzi," "The Flying Dutchman," "Tann- 
hauser" and "Lohengrin." Nobody has ever dreamed of at- 
tributing the inspiration of any of these works to his wife 
Minna. 

It is seldom indeed that a woman is credited with inspiring 
a man of genius — after she has married him. As a literary 
theory the thing is not popular. 

Wagner's wife had been an opera singer. It is admitted 
even by the great man's jealous biographers, that she was of 
more than ordinary beauty, that she shared bravely his early 
hardships and that she was a pure and loyal wife. 

But it seems certain that she did not inspire the great man. 
In his later life he was wont to say that his wedlock had been 
nothing but a trial of his patience and pity; perhaps he was 
indebted for this to his vanity rather than his recollection. 

Mathilde, on the contrary, was Wagner's inspiration, for 
has he not told us so? — though, to be sure, we may credit her 
with inspiring only one opera, "Tristan and Isolde." Un- 
fortunately, she was the wife of another man, but again for- 
tunately, her husband was of a truly Germanic simplicity and 
child-like trust. 

Herr Wesendonck was also a man of means and could 
give his wife the indulgence of many luxuries and whims, 
which must have added to her attractiveness in the eyes of 



54 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

the struggling man of genius. Money has never been known 
to cheapen the charms of a really desirable woman. 

Portraits of Mathilde show a Madonna-like face of pure 
and delicate outline, with eyes of haunting tenderness and a 
mouth of sensitive appeal — such lips, so sweet yet sad, so in- 
viting yet so free from sensual suggestion, are seen only 
among the higher types of German beauty. Not, I grant 
you, a face indicating carnal passion, but what then? — many 
a woman who looked like a Madonna has loved not wisely 
but too well, and some have been known to bear children in 
the human fashion. 

I have never seen a portrait of Herr Wesendonck. 

Truly he deserves one for consenting to the romance which 
has immortalized his name. Wagner seems to have felt this 
when he once wrote Herr Wesendonck that the latter should 
have a place with him in the history of art. In this letter 
Wagner says nothing of the fine set of horns which (outside 
of Germany) an evil-minded generation has freely awarded 
his generous friend. 

Mark here again the gushing Ellis : — 

"It is as a knightly figure that he (Herr Wesendonck) will 
ever abide in the memory of all who met him, and surely tru- 
er knightliness than he displayed in a singularly difficult con- 
juncture, can nowhere have been found outside King Ar- 
thur's court. Undoubtedly it was he who was the greatest 
sufferer for several years, — by no means Minna, — years of 
perpetual heart-burnings bravely borne." 

Herr Wesendonck was indeed a pattern husband for a 
young woman of romantic yearnings. 

He shared her admiration for Wagner's genius and for a 



RICHARD WAGNER'S ROMANCE $S 

long time refused to see that his wife was actuated by any 
other motive. 

He gave Wagner financial aid and finally offered him, 
with Minna, a home in a pretty cottage on his estate at Zu- 
rich. 

He tolerated the connection even after it had become the 
occasion of bitter quarrels on his domestic hearth. 

On the whole, I am persuaded that a figure of like chival- 
ry is not to be found outside of Germany, nor perhaps any- 
where since the noble Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. 

Mathilde's few letters tell us nothing — her soul is never 
unveiled — she compels us to take Wagner's word for the 
whole of the romance. Her attitude in this correspondence 
— if such it may be called — puts the great man in a dubious 
light. We may not think the less of the artist, but the man 
loses nobility; Herr Wesendonck gets his revenge. 

But at last Minna intercepted one of Wagner's letters to 
Mathilde (which is not given in this collection), and deliv- 
ered it herself, with words suiting the occasion. Naturally, 
this broke up the arrangements at Zurich; Wagner sent his 
wife back to her parents and betook himself to Venice. Herr 
Wesendonck's conduct in the circumstances was without a 
flaw; this admirable man seems truly worthy both of Ger- 
many and Spain. 



There is a harmless mania for identifying particular per- 
sons with poetic creations, and with such hints as Wagner 
constantly threw out during the period of their attachment, it 
was impossible that Mathilde should escape. 

"With thee I can do all things," he said, "without thee, 
nothing!" 



56 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

This was not strictly true, however, and must be taken as 
a poetic license, since he wrote several operas before meet- 
ing her and did some of his greatest work long after the 
parting. 

But let me not discourage the sentimentalists. It is true 
that he said, u For having written the 'Tristan 7 I thank you 
from my deepest soul to all eternity." 

It is also certain that he used to write his music with a gold 
pen that Mathilde had given him, and that in exile he re- 
ceived from her a package of his favorite zwieback with 
tears of joy. For these and other reasons I would not deny 
her title to be regarded as the original inspiration of "Tris- 
tan and Isolde." 

Still, we have all heard of another enamored young person 
who, when her lover had got himself somewhat desperately 
out of the way — 

"Went on eating bread and butter" 

Absence, it appears, had some effect in cooling the roman- 
tic fevors of Mathilde. Some half-dozen years after the rup- 
ture at Zurich, "Tristan and Isolde," that "child of our sor- 
rows," as Wagner lovingly wrote her and to which her name 
for good or evil is now linked forever, was produced for the 
first time in Munich. 

Mathilde had the earliest invitation, with the composer's 
own compliments; but she did not attend, and the heart of 
Minna was not harrowed by seeing her name "among those 
present." 

It is no reproach to the nightingales of Germany that they 
sang longer in the heart of her lover. . . . 

And the lindens bloom on immortally. 



In the Red Room, 




URELY there was nothing supernatural about the 
manner of it. The thing happened in a bril- 
liantly lighted room where I was one of a hun- 
dred persons, all occupied with the very material 
business of dining, and dining well. No envi- 
ronment could be more unsuited to a visitor or a message 
from the Beyond. The lights, the music, the noise of incom- 
ing or departing guests, the bustling waiters, the hum of 
joyous conversation punctuated with the popping of wine 
corks, the deep tones of men, the staccato laughter of 
women, — these were the accompaniment of the strangest 
experience of my life, to which I hesitate to give a name. 

And then, oh my God! can a Ghost eat? can a Ghost 
drink? can a Ghost talk and yet attract no notice in a crowded 
company of feasting men and women ? 

Let me re-word the matter — a thing which Hamlet tells us 
"madness would gambol from;" let me by the strictest effort 
of memory and reason strip the supernatural from it, if I 
may. 

I was dining alone in a corner of his favorite French cafe; 
in the Red Room, too, of whose cheerful warmth and bright- 
ness of color he had been outspokenly fond in his hearty way. 
He had introduced me to this place and here we had often 
dined together. Here or elsewhere, alas, we should dine to- 
gether no more ... he died suddenly in his youth 
and strength some four years ago. 



5 8 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Always I think of him when I am in the Red Room of 
this cafe, whether alone or in company; but this night the 
thought, the image, the vital recollection of him, faultless in 
every detail, possessed me absolutely. I had made very little 
progress with my dinner and had taken but one glass of 
Chateau Palmer when I resigned myself to the sad pleasure 
of keeping tryst with his memory. 

First, of all, my mind dwelt on our friendship : how sweet 
it was, how firm, how true; with never a doubt to mar it, 
never a cold wind of jealousy or envy to blow upon it. We 
were lovers, — for such friendship between men is a purer 
sentiment than the love of man and woman, only the nobler 
emotions of the heart being engaged. 

We were neither too old nor too young for a real friend- 
ship; both were still well under that chilly meridian where 
men usually part with the enthusiasms of life in order to 
take on the prudences and self-calculations. Of the two he 
was the junior, but he assumed a kind of specious seniority 
by virtue of his physical bigness and his greater success in 
battling with the world. O friend, how true in your case 
that the battle is not always to the strong! 

I recalled how the anticipation of dining with him, in this 
very Red Room, was quite the most exquisite pleasure I have 
known, no woman ever having given me the like — though I 
am anything but a hater of women. And I said to myself 
with a sigh that there were not left in all the world three 
men, the thought of dining with whom could yield me an 
equal joy. 

That is, I maintain, the crucial test of friendship. Do 
you like to dine with him? Not without a deep meaning was 



IN THE RED ROOM 59 

of old the life of a man held sacred with whom one had 
shared bread and salt. The sacramental rite of ancient hos- 
pitality persists under our less simple and less beautiful 
forms. Nor may we violate it with impunity, barbarians as 
we are; — Nature cries out against our performing this act 
with one whom we dislike or mistrust, or even toward whom 
we are indifferent. In a word, I had rather make love to a 
woman who affects me with a physical repulsion than to dine 
with a man I don't like. The fact proves the perfect sym- 
pathy existing between our physical and psychical selves, and 
from this dual voice there is no appeal — it is the highest court 
of human nature. 

This was the very thought in my mind when raising the 
second glass of Bordeaux to my lips I saw him 
and set it down untasted. 

He came into the room at the farthest entrance leading 
direct to the street, and shouldered his way through the 
crowd of guests and waiters in his old big careless manner, 
which never failed to move the admiration of women and 
the resentment of men. He was dressed as I had so often 
seen him, not in regulation evening clothes, but in a suit of 
some rich gray material which he wore as if a part of him, 
with a light overcoat tossed over his arm: — it was in the 
early days of April. 

The shouldering gray-suited giant, picked out in strong 
relief from all the black-clad guests, came straight toward 
me across the crowded room, his fine head, crowned with 
auburn curls, held solidly erect on a columnar neck ; the smil- 
ing, eager challenge of his eye bent upon me. 

What I thought God alone knows, if indeed I was not de- 



60 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

prived of all conscious power of thinking in that terrible 
moment. And yet, obedient to old habit, I tried to rise from 
my chair to greet him, but found myself utterly paralyzed. 
Neither hand nor foot could I move. 

But though my body was stricken lifeless by the presence 
of the Supernatural, my soul, strange to say, remained calm 
and without terror. And great as was the physical shock 
of the fear which held me now as in a vise, I yet wondered 
that our neighbors, almost elbowing us, seemed to pay no 
attention either to him or to me. 

"Don't get up, old fellow ; you're a bit shaken. I'll just sit 
here, if you don't mind, and have a taste of your dinner and 
a sip of your Chateau Palmer — you always did like the red." 

His voice ! — the same genial heart tones in it that had ever 
such power to thrill me. Oh ! I could believe it all a dream, 
a hallucination arising from some disorder of the senses, were 
it not for that voice whose tones are registered in my heart. 
In obedience to a nod from me, — for I could not have spoken 
had my life depended on it, — the waiter, without the least 
apparent show of concern, laid another plate. From his 
manner I could not divine if he was conscious of the presence 
of my Guest. 

Ah! then I knew it was indeed my friend over whose 
untimely grave the grass had withered and the winds had 
blown during four long years. For in the old loving big- 
brotherly way, he began to play the host as of yore, to heap 
my plate with good things and to fill my glass with cheerful 
assiduity. "I'm afraid you must often go hungry without 
me to help you, old boy," he said, with the old kind smile. 

Still, I could not speak, but at his bidding I ate my share 



IN THE RED ROOM 61 

of the dinner. He too partook, though lightly, and soon we 
had made an end of it. Then the waiter having cleared the 
table and served the coffee, he offered me a cigarette from a 
full box — his old favorite brand, I noticed — and lit one him- 
self. 

I watched him mutely, with emotions which I may not 
describe — perhaps rather with a tense suspension of all emo- 
tion, save that of a fearful expectancy. 

He spoke: "You thought of me so lovingly and insistently 
to-night, in this place where we have often been happy to- 
gether, that I had to come to you. Love is the one thing, 
you see, that has power to recall us from the Shadow." 

He paused, and the flute-like laughter of women rose high 
above the surrounding hum of talk and the surded strains 
of the orchestra. There came into his eye a light I well 
knew. 

Nodding his head whence the laughter had proceeded, he 
went on : 

u The keenest part of your regret for me, my friend, is 
that I who loved that so much should have had to die in the 
flower of my youth." 

Even as he spoke my mind like lightning overran his brief 
career. I saw him as he was when he came from the rugged 
North to the Big Town, a young giant in his health and 
strength and in his eager appetite for pleasure. I marked in 
him that terrible passion for women to which so many splen- 
did and generous natures are sacrificed; that craving for 
action and excitement which eats the sword in the scabbard; 
that tiger thirst for the enchanted Goblet of Life which 
would drain all to the dregs at a single draught ; that devour- 



62 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

ing energy which knows no rest but with daring hand would 
tear aside the curtain betwixt day and day. 

He went on as if I had spoken my thoughts aloud: "Yes, 
there is nothing of all this about us but I have had, my boy, 
and good measure — as you were thinking. Life owes me 
nothing, even though I did close my account at thirty. I lived 
every minute of my time — got all there was coming to me or 
to any man. No regrets ! If I could come back for keeps I 
would not live otherwise, do otherwise, than I have lived and 
done. Excepting, perhaps, that I would not make such a 
hurried job of it. Yes, that was my mistake, but you are 
not to pity me therefor. For what matter a few years more 
or less, a few dinners more or less — aye, a few passions, more 
or less, the best and only permanently alluring pleasure that 
life can offer? The end is the same, and the end comes as 
surely to him who has outlived his digestion and his capacity 
for enjoyment as to him who, like me, dies with every power 
and every appetite at the full." 

For a moment I took my eyes from my Guest and looked 
anxiously about to assure myself that nobody was listening 
to this confession of the Dead. As before, we seemed not to 
attract any special attention. Our nearest neighbors, a man 
and a young woman a little the worse for wine, hardly 
deigned us a glance, and were certainly occupied with any- 
thing but spiritual affairs. This bit of the universal human 
comedy was repeated here and there about the room. Many 
of the guests had left and with each departure the scattered 
lovers seemed to take on fresh courage and confidence. The 
orchestra continued to play intermittently and was applauded 
ever the more wildly by the still lingering guests. 



IN THE RED ROOM 63 

All this I saw in the space of less than an instant that my 
eyes left his face. 

He continued: "You have grieved too much, dear old 
boy, over the thought that I was cheated or cheated myself 
of my due share of life. The cowards who dared not live, 
the weaklings whose fill of life was starvation and death to 
me, found a text and a moral in my fate. Let not this be 
your thought, my friend, when you sit here alone in the Red 
Room and pledge me in old Bordeaux. Think rather that I 
fulfilled my life, won every prize of my desire, tasted every 
joy, scorned every fear, and died in the flush of vic- 
tory!" . . . 

As he said these last words his voice sounded like the dis- 
tant note of a silver clarion. Could it be possible that he was 
unheard by the neighboring diners ? Again I stole a fearful 
glance about the room. 

Evidently nobody was concerned with us in the now 
thinned-out company. The hour was late. Leaning against 
the wall, at a little distance, was our waiter, quietly observant 
of us, as I thought, but not importunate with his attentions. 

With a feeling of relief I turned again to my Visitor. He 
was gone! — but for some moments my bewilderment and 
stupefaction were such that I could not remove my eyes from 
the vacant chair where he had been seated an instant before. 

I must have cried out, recovering my speech, for I awoke 
as from a trance to see that the guests were all looking 
toward me in a surprised fashion. In the same moment the 
waiter came hastily forward. 

"Did Monsieur call? Is anything the matter with Mon- 
sieur?" 



64 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

"No, no," I managed to articulate, my presence of mind 
returning at sight of those staring faces; "what should be 
the matter? Just bring me a pony of brandy — and the bill." 

He was back in a moment with the liquor, and having 
figured out the bill, laid it face down on the table before me. 

I tossed off the brandy, thinking that I had just had the 
strangest hallucination that ever sprang from a few glasses 
of old Bordeaux, and unable to account for it upon any 
theory of my previous experience, or temperament, or con- 
stitution. 

Then I took up the dinner check and, surprised at the 
amount, called the waiter. 

"Haven't you made a mistake?" I asked, indicating the 
charge. 

"But . . . pardon! — the other gentleman. Mon- 
sieur is paying for two," said the waiter. 




Saint Mark/ 




E-ENTER the Sieur de Conte! . . . 

Our gallant old friend makes as knightly a 
show as of yore when first he rode into the lists 
and pledged his fealty to the stainless Maid. 
But alas! his hair that rivaled the raven's wing 
for blackness, is now white as carded wool. Yet has that 
eye lost nothing of its old fire and the years have but fetched 
new strength and cunning to> his hand. And methinks the 
Sieur fights with a tempered skill and a wary shrewdness 
that were not always his in the old days — by my halidom, I 
would not care to be the Holy Council at Rome with such 
a champion pitted against me ! For indeed the Holy Council 
may pow-wow as long or as short as may please their holi- 
nesses — the world at the challenge of the Sieur de Conte, 
has awarded the crown of saintship to Joan of Arc. The 
living voice, the magic pen of the Sieur de Conte are worth 
all their musty raking from the past; are more than worth 
their pretended authority to decide the question. If the Holy 
Fathers have dropped the matter for the nonce, as rumor 
now declares, they have but done the thing that might have 
been expected of them. The Church is ever too wise to inr 
vite defeat, too politic to issue a dead-letter, too strong in 
its divine right to surrender on heretic compulsion. Besides, 
it is here to stay forever ; and shall it be moved for a chit of a 
girl who has been dead only a matter of five hundred years? 
—Tut, tut, — there is always plenty of time! 

*This essay was written before the Beatification of the Maid, (Beatification is 
not Cannonization) but the fact does not necessarily call for any change in what I 
have written. 



66 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

The Sieur de Conte (otherwise Mark Twain) in all that 
he has written on the subject, has failed to point out one ex- 
traordinary fact with regard to Joan of Arc. I am glad that 
he has left it to me. It is this: Since that fearful day in 
Rouen when she was led to her martyrdom by fire, she has 
been the glory of the faith and the shame of the Church. 
That is why she has waited so long for the formal warrant 
of saintship. That is why the Devil's Advocate has so far 
prevailed to> deny her on earth the crown she wears in Heav- 
en. That is why the Church, unless moved to it by powerful 
reasons, will not canonize her. 

Do not think this a musty old question which interests 
only a few droning priests sitting in a back room of the Vat- 
ican, and here and there a poetic idealist like the Sieur de 
Conte. By no means ! — it is a question as vital as the fame 
of the Maid herself, calling forth champions and antagonists 
in every age. It is a plague-sore in the side of the Church — 
put your finger there! It never has been settled because it 
never could and never can be settled to the credit of the 
Church. Also I believe it is bound up with the eternal ques- 
tion of liberty, in whose holy cause the Maid fought and suf- 
fered. 

Joan of Arc was done to death by the priests and theolo- 
gians of the day, urged on by the civil power in the hands of 
her French and English enemies. I am aware that her 
death is not chargeable, in a direct sense, to the Church, 
and it is deemed likely by Lamartine that she would have 
been saved had she known enough to appeal directly to 
Rome. I am aware that, short of canonization, the Church 
has done what it could to make amends to the memory of 



SAINT MARK 67 

Joan of Arc. To give her the crown of saintship now, would 
not restore the credit of the Church, but would rather irre- 
parably damage it in the eyes of the world. For the two or 
three hundred priests and theologians who judged the Maid, 
as well as the godly men of the Inquisition of Paris who 
damned her as a child of the Devil, were in loyal communion 
with the Church and were, in fact, part of its machinery. 
Still, it is certain that the Church, in its true representative 
and executive character, did not incur the guilt and odium of 
Joan's death. But the whole system arrogating divine pow- 
ers and claiming the right to draw supernatural warrants, 
was involved in the trial and murder of the Maid; was 
judged by the measure with which it meted to her; and is 
now of a truth dead forever to the more enlightened part of 
mankind. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of liberty ! 

A certain set of apologists on behalf of the Church try to 
cast all the blame of Joan's persecution and death on the 
English. To be sure, the English had the best right to hate 
her and to seek her destruction, for had she not beaten them 
in many battles and all but driven them out of the fair land 
of France, which they had come to regard as their own? But 
let us be fair; her own countrymen shared to the full in the 
guilt and the shame of her death — nothing can clear them of 
that! Besides, we are not to forget that both French and 
English were in that day of the same religious faith. Not a 
single heretic took part in the proceedings against Joan, 
from the holy clerics of the Inquisition of Paris who pro- 
nounced anathema upon her, to Bishop Cauchon, that zeal- 
ous prototype of Fouquier Tinville, who sought her blood 
openly and thirsted for it with an eager relish that shocked 



68 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

even his fellow judges; or the rude soldiers who kept guard 
ziithin her cell and probably, caused her as much anguish, 
at times, as the threat of the fire. They were all believers in 
the One True Faith, and the stain of her innocent blood is 
upon every one of them, French and English. Make no mis- 
take about that! 

Indeed, we can not go astray as to the facts, and these 
themselves can not be twisted to the purpose of special 
pleading; for the whole plan of the murder of Joan of Arc, 
the carefully marked steps by which it was relentlessly car- 
ried out, the heroic but ineffectual struggles of the victim, 
the unspeakable devices resorted to, in order to circumvent 
and destroy her, the pitiless, unhalting purpose of her pros- 
ecutors, marked as with a pencil of red, — are laid bare to us, 
by the sworn testimony of eye-witnesses, with a fulness of 
detail and a veracity of statement which leave hardly a ques- 
tion to be asked or a doubt to be solved. It is all there — the 
conspiracy of power, learning and holiness (God save the 
mark ! ) against one helpless, ignorant, innocent girl. We see 
the suavely ferocious Cauchon pressing her with both his 
holy hands towards the scaffold — he was excommunicated 
some years afterward, but it didn't save the Church's credit. 
We see that formidable array of priests setting the utmost 
skill of their wits, the deepest resources of their cunning, 
against a simple country girl who could neither read or 
write a name which is now one of the best known on the 
earth; trying by every art of casuistry to wrest or surprise 
from her an admission that should send her to the flames. 

Let us be just: they were not all equally guilty, not all 
equally intent on the slaughter of the innocent lamb before 



SAINT MARK 69 

them. Not one was as bad as the monster Cauchon, and 
to be strictly fair even to that consecrated beast, not one had 
Cauchon's motive — but the fact does not save the Church's 
credit. Some of these priests had kind hearts and would 
gladly have sent the child home to her mother; but they 
lacked the power. Besides, they were captives themselves, 
bound hand and foot with the fetters of superstition and 
devil-born lunacy, misnamed religious fervor; daunted by 
monstrous ignorance, and mythic fears of hell and darkness, 
chrisomed and holy-watered into a pretence of light and 
knowledge — aye, they were cowering slaves, branded and 
obedient to the lash, and she standing free and enfranchised 
in her chains ! 

Though I am the first to call attention to the matter, there 
are many points of likeness between the trial of Jesus Christ 
and the trial of Joan of Arc. They were both sold for a 
price of silver. Both were martyrs of liberty. Both perished 
through a combination of forces political and priestly. 
Christ had Caiaphas; Joan had Cauchon, something the 
worst of it. The chief accusers, the head prosecutors of each 
were priests, and as the Jews cried out at the trial of Jesus, 
"His blood be upon us and upon our children!" — so might 
the priests have cried out at the condemnation of Joan, "Her 
blood be upon us and upon the Church 1" It is there yet — 
the excommunication of Cauchon and the reversal of the 
Judgment have not removed it. Something more will have to 
be done ere that Great Wrong can be righted. 

But having shown the great similarity marking the trials 
of Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc, I now wish to call attention 
to a most striking point of unlikeness, which is even more sug- 



70 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

gestive than the resemblance shown. It is this: among the 
judges of Joan of Arc — priests as they were or deemed them- 
selves to be, of the Christ of love and mercy — there was none 
so merciful as Pontius Pilate, whose memory is not held in 
much honor by the Christian world; not one had the cour- 
age or the humanity to wash his hands of the intended 
murder. Some desired it out of their blind ignorance and 
cruel fanaticism ; many no doubt regretted it, as a severe but 
salutary act of faith ; all consented to it ! The responsibility 
is thus landed squarely where it belongs, on the official re- 
ligion which was then in league with the secular arm. If there 
had been the least available doubt as to that — if the damning 
record were not in black and white, attested by the solemn 
oaths of so many witnesses of or participants in the trial — 
the Church would long ago, for her own credit, have granted 
the saintship of Joan of Arc, and to-day the altars of the 
Maid of Orleans would flame in a hundred lands. But 
perhaps, since the Eternal Church does not count years as 
men count them, it is yet some ages too soon to raise an 
altar to the Second Great Martyr of Liberty. And maybe 
this is a fortunate thing for Liberty and the Maid, for on 
the day that the Church makes Joan of Arc wholly her own, 
on that day she will step down from the unexampled place 
she has so long held in the love and pity and worship of 
mankind. Such a consummation would not, I am sure, be 
agreeable to her leal knight and devoted champion, the Sieur 
de Conte Mark Twain. 

In the wide court of Heaven, on any of these fine days, you 
may see — if God has given you sight above your eyes — a 



SAINT MARK 71 

Maid who has been a maiden now during full five hundred 
years. Her hair is the color of the corn-silk at harvest time 
and her eyes of the early forget-me-not. She is slender as 
of old when, clad in shining armor and mounted on her milk 
white steed, she led the long dispirited warriors of France 
to victory or upheld her wondrous standard at the corona- 
tion of her King. Often she may be seen leaning over the 
crystal battlements, chin on hand and looking down with 
pensive gaze on France, and Orleans, and Domremy, and 
Rouen whence her soul, like a white dove, ascended in the 
flame of her country's cruel ingratitude. 

But sometimes she turns her glance from scenes like these, 
charged with sweet and terrible memories, and looks down 
with loving intentness toward a certain spot on earth where 
an old white-haired man raises eyes of love and almost wor- 
ship to hers. They see and salute each other — oh, be sure of 
that ! The old man was many years younger when they first 
became acquainted, but the Maid is always the same age, for 
they grow no older in Heaven. Who shall explain the spell 
(since the Sieur de Conte will not confess his dreams), that 
has joined in a perfect love and understanding these two 
children of Nature, separated by the difference of race and 
the shoreless gulf of five hundred years ? Who can but won- 
der at the enchanting touch of a white hand from out the 
past which has turned the bold scoffer and jeerer, the wild 
man of the river and the mining camps, into such a knight 
as was rarely seen in the most gracious days of chivalry? 
And to see him now, when he should be taking the rest he 
has so gloriously earned, still eager to battle in her cause, 
daring the world to the onset, fighting for her with the pas- 



72 



PALMS OF PAPYRUS 



sionate heart of youth, pleading for her with a burning zeal, 
as if in the five centuries that have rolled away since her 
death no other cause worthy to be named with hers has ap- 
pealed to the award of sword or pen — to see this rightly and 
with eyes cleared for the perception of that Truth which is 
the only thing really precious in the world, is to rejoice at the 
finest spectacle that has been given to the wondering eyes of 
men in our day. 

Whether the brave old knight will yet win the whole 
world over to her side, I can not say, though I think he will, 
if he be given time enough; but, at any rate, he has already 
made sure of all kind and feeling hearts. I believe his devo- 
tion to Joan of Arc is the finest and most ideal poem of our 
age — an age, to be sure, which has known too little poetry 
and which has never thought of looking to the Sieur de Conte 
to supply it. And I believe, further, that the Book of the 
Ideal contains the story of no love more pure and beautiful 
than this which unites the Old Man and the Maid. 




6scar Slildc's Atonement. 




T HARDLY seems a decade since the disgrace, 
the trial and sentence of Oscar Wilde. His death 
followed so close upon his punishment as to give 
the deepest tragic value to the lesson of his fall. 
There was in truth nothing left him to do but 
die, after he had penned the most poignantly pathetic poem 
and the most strangely moving confession (which is yet a 
subtle vindication) that have been given to the world since 
the noon of Byron's fame. 

Until the present hour the world has withheld its pity from 
that tragedy, as complete in all its features as the Greek con- 
science would have exacted, — and Oscar Wilde has stood be- 
yond the pale of human sympathy. Only seemed to stand, 
however, for there are many signs of the reaction, the better 
judgment which never delays long behnd the severest con- 
demnation of the public voice when, as in this case, the cir- 
cumstances justify an appeal to the higher mercy and human- 
ity. 

Socially, Oscar Wilde was executed, and for a brief time it 
seemed as if his name would stand only in the calendar of 
the infamous. But men presently remembered that he was a 
genius, a literary artist of almost unique distinction among 
English writers, a wit whose talent for paradox and deli- 
cately perverse fancy had yielded the world a pure treasure 
of delight. In the first hue and cry of his disgrace, the 
British public — and to a large extent, the American public 



74 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

also — had taken up moral cudgels not merely against the man 
himself, but against the writer, — a piece of ingratitude for 
which God will surely punish the stupid English. His plays 
were withdrawn from the theatres, his writings from the libra- 
ries and book stalls, and his name was anathema wherever 
British respectability wields its leaden mace. But though you 
can pass sentence of social death upon a man, you can not 
execute a Book! You can not lay your hangman's hands 
upon an Idea, and all the edicts of Philistinism are powerless 
against it. For true genius is the rarest and most precious 
thing in the world, and God has wisely ordained that the 
malice or stupidity of men shall not destroy it. And this the 
world sees to be just, when it has had time to weigh the mat- 
ter, as in the present instance. 

Oscar Wilde went to his prison with the burden of such 
shame and reprobation as has never been laid upon a literary 
man of equal eminence. Not a voice was raised for him — 
the starkness of his guilt silenced even his closest friends and 
warmest admirers. The world at large approved of his pun- 
ishment. That small portion of the world which is loth to 
see the suffering of any sinner, was revolted by the nature 
of his offense and turned away without a word; the sin of 
Oscar Wilde claimed no charity and permitted of no discus- 
sion. Had his crime been murder itself, his fame and genius 
would have raised up defenders on every hand. As it was, 
all mouths were stopped and the man went broken-hearted 
to his doom. 

But while his body lay in prison, the children of his mind 
pleaded for him, and such is the invincible appeal of genius, 
the heart of the world began to be troubled in despite of it- 



OSCAR WILDE'S ATONEMENT 75 

self. His books came slowly forth from their hiding-places; 
his name was restored here and there to a catalogue; 
a little emotion of pity was awakened in his favor. Then 
from his prison cell rose a cry of soul-anguish, of utter pathos, 
of supreme expiation, which stirred the heart of pity to its 
depths. The feigner was at last believed when the world 
had made sure of the accents of his agony and could put its 
finger in each of his wounds. Society had sentenced this 
poet: the poet both sentenced and forgave society, in the 
"Ballad of Reading Gaol," thus achieving the most original 
paradox of his fantastic genius and throwing about his shame 
something of the halo of martyrdom. He did more than this, 
in the judgment of his fellow artists — he purchased his re- 
demption and snatched his name from the mire of infamy 
into which it had been cast. Strange how the world ap- 
plauded the triumphant genius which only a little while be- 
fore it had condemned to ignominy and silence! 

The utter and incredible completeness of Wilde's disgrace 
satisfies the artistic sense, which is never content with half- 
results. We know that it afforded this kind of satisfaction 
to the victim himself, exigent of artistic effects even in his 
catastrophe — and the proof of it is "De Profundis." 

I may here remark that the virtuous publishers, both in 
England and America, who are quick to take their cue from 
the many-headed beast, are now making amends to the mem- 
ory of poor Wilde in their fashion ; that is, they are turning 
a pretty penny by the sale of his books, most of which cost 
them nothing. The rage of contumely is changed into a 
furore of admiration and a crescendo of regret. To some of 
us, the pawing over of Wilde's literary remains by the vulgar 



76 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

mob and the present indecent enterprise of the publishers, 
are not less disgusting than the conduct of both parties in 
the hour of the man's calamity. 

"De Profundis" will take rank with the really memorable 
human documents. It is a true cry of the heart, a sincere 
utterance of the spiritual depths of this man's nature, when 
the angels of sorrow had troubled the pool. The only thing 
that seems to militate against its acceptance as such, is the 
unfailing presence of that consummate literary art, too con- 
scious of itself, which, as in all the author's work save the 
"Ballad of Reading Gaol," draws us constantly from the 
substance to the form. Many persons of critical acumen say 
they can not see the penitent for the artist. The texture of 
the sackcloth is too exquisitely wrought and is too mani- 
festly of the loom that gave us "Dorian Gray," "Salome," 
and the rest. How could a man stricken unto death with 
grief and shame so occupy himself with the vanity of style, — 
a dilettante even in the hour when fate was crushing him with 
its heaviest blows? Does not this wonderful piece of work, 
lambent with all the rays of his lawless genius, show the arti- 
ficial core of the man as nothing that even he ever did before? 
And what is the spiritual value of a "confession" which is so 
obviously a literary tour de force; in which the plain and the 
simple are avoided with the "precious," lapidary art of a 
prince of decadents? 

So say, or seem to say, the critics. For myself, I can ac- 
cept as authentic Wilde's testament of sorrow, even though 
it be written in a style which often dazzles with beauty, sur- 
prises with paradox, and sometimes intoxicates with the rap- 



OSCAR WILDE'S ATONEMENT 77 

ture of the inevitable artist. He could not teach his hand to 
unlearn its cunning, strive as he might. Like Narcissus won- 
dering at his own beauty in the fountain, no sooner had he 
begun to tell the tale of his sorrow than the loveliness of his 
words seized upon him, and the sorrow that found such ex- 
pression seemed a thing almost to be desired. 

So when Oscar Wilde took up the pen in his prison solitude 
to make men weep, he did that indeed, but too soon he de- 
lighted them as of yore. Art, his adored mistress, whispered 
her thrilling consolations to the poor castaway — they had 
taken all from him, — liberty, honor, wealth, fame, mother, 
wife, children, and shut him up in an iron hell, but by God ! 
they should not take her! With this little pen in hand they 
were all under his feet, — solemn judge, stolid jury, the beast 
of many heads and the whited British Philistia. Let them 
come on now! — but soft, the poet's anger is gone in a mo- 
ment, for beauty, faithful to one who had loved her t'other 
side o' madness, comes and fills his narrow cell with her ador- 
able presence, bringing the glory of the sweet world he has 
lost, — the breath of dawn, the scented hush of summer nights, 
the peace of April rains, the pageant of the autumn lands, 
the changeful wonder of the sea. Imagination brushes away 
his bounds of stone and steel to give him all her largess of 
the past; gracious figures of poesy and romance known and 
loved from his sinless youth (the man is always an artist, 
but you see ! he can weep) ; the elect company of classic ages 
to whom his soul does reverance and who seem not to scorn 
him ; the fair heroines of immortal story who in the old days, 
as his dreams so often told him, had deemed him worthy of 
their love— he would kneel at their white feet now, but their 



7 8 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

sweet glances carry no rebuke; the kind poets, his beloved 
masters in Apollo, who bend upon him no alienated gaze; 
the heroes, the sages who had inspired his boyish heart, the 
sceptred and mighty sons of genius who had roused in him 
a passion for fame — all come thronging at the summons of 
memory and fancy — a far dearer and better world than that 
which had denied, cursed and condemned him, and which he 
was to know no more. 

Then, last of all, when these fair and noble guests were 
gone and the glow of their visitation had died out into the 
old bitter loneliness and sorrow, there came One whose smile 
had the brightness of the sun and the seven stars. And the 
poor prisoner of sin cast himself down at the feet of the 
Presence as unworthy to look upon that divine radiancy, and 
the fountains of his heart were broken up as never before. 
Yet in his weeping he heard a Voice which said," Thy sin 
and sorrow are equal and thou hast still but a little way to 
go. Come!" 

Then rose up the sinner and fared forth of the spirit with 
Christ to Emmaus. . . . 

And men will yet say that the words which the sinner 
wrote of that Vision have saved his soul (that soon thereafter 
was demanded of him) and sweetened his fame forever. But 
the critics who forget the adjuration, " Judge not lest ye be 
judged," cry out that the sinner is never to be trusted in 
these matters, because he writes so well ! God, however, is 
kinder than men or critics. He will forgive the poor poet 
in spite of his beautiful style. 



OSCAR WILDE'S ATONEMENT 79 

POSTSCRIPT. 

In May, 1905, I wrote the foregoing essay, inspired as it 
was by the publication of Oscar Wilde's u De Profundis." 
The few American critics who did me the honor to notice my 
article, took exception to the fact that I had accepted Wilde's 
repentance as sincere, and they were at somewhat scandalous 
pains to point out his relapse into his old evil courses — an 
accusation which, at the time, I believed to rest only upon 
such idle gossip as the poet's disgrace and conviction would 
naturally give rise to. 

The charitable view held by these critics, and I believe still 
held by too many people, was that the man's name should be 
blotted from memory and his literary legacy annulled since, 
after his public punishment and professed penitence, he had 
again fallen into the ways of sin. 

They, and many with them, seem to have forgotten the 
precept of Him who said that even the just man shall fall not 
seven times but seventy times seven ! 

As I have said, I did not at the time of writing "Oscar 
Wilde's Atonement" believe that in his last miserable days he 
had succumbed to those fatal, inborn propensities which had 
brought him to ruin. Unfortunately, it is only too well 
known now that he did so succumb, and I am even willing 
to admit that, things being as they are, British justice which 
destroyed him, was what the world calls vindicated by his 
final relapse into shame and ill-doing. For had he not so 
fallen again and again, unable to resist the curse of tempta- 
tion laid upon him, or the innate plague of his blood, it would 
have been easy enough to class his repentance with so much 
else that was affected and insincere in his life. 



8o PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

But, mark you, I do not the less hold that the atonement 
of Oscar Wilde was exemplary and effective, and that the 
world is not a whit the less indebted to him for the legacy 
and lesson of "De Profundis." For that he was sincere when 
he penned this testament of sorrow (in spite of its literary 
art and beauty) , no humane mind will question a moment. It 
is written in the tears of the heart; it witnesses the most 
tragic humiliation of a man of genius that ever found lit- 
erary expression; nor is its truth and sincerity to be suspect 
because the indomitable God-given pride of genius breathes 
through it all. 

But it seems the doubtful public that had previously cried 
"Crucify him!" wanted to be very sure ere they would be- 
lieve in the penitence of this great sinner; like Thomas sur- 
named Didymus, they would put their fingers in his wounds 
and their hands in his side to verify for themselves that his 
heart was really and truly broken ; — aye, and they would even 
taste his tears to make sure if these were salt! 

You were not cheated, O charitable British Christian pub- 
lic ! — the man was verily a great sinner, as the judge and jury 
had said, as he had himself confessed, and especially as he 
proved toward the wretched end by sinning again and again 
when sin had lost the evil grace and beauty which he was 
wont to perversely fancy in it, and had become perhaps only 
a means of self-destruction. And his heart was surely broken, 
too, for he died soon after your justice was done with him, 
and the doctors could see no other cause for it. Absolutely, 
the whole affair was without fraud and conducted in strict 
accordance with British Christian principles! 

And now I have but one word more to say on the still 



OSCAR WILDE'S ATONEMENT 81 

mooted question of Oscar Wilde's repentance — a word that 
will not fail to shock the literary Pharisees. It is this: the 
sincerity of his repentance — the truth of "De Profundis" — 
the measure of his irremediable sorrow — the validity of his 
atonement — were attested beyond question forevermore by 
the fact of his relapse into sin, and were sealed with the sov- 
ereign seal of death. The man's expiation was in truth su- 
preme — he could give no more than his life, executing judg- 
ment upon himself, as he seems to have anticipated in the 
most memorable of his poems: — 

For he who sins a second time 

Wakes a dead soul to pain, 
And draws it from its spotted shroud, 

And makes it bleed again, 
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood, 

And makes it bleed in vain! 

Conventional morality sees only the stock retribution of the 
sinner in the fate of Oscar Wilde — it is unable to conceive 
that the end was of his own choosing. Yet to read it other- 
wise were to slur the meaning of the most extraordinary spir- 
itual tragedy of our time. Had Wilde's repentance been in- 
sincere, his sorrow a pose, his anguish a literary artifice ( as 
the critics are still contending) , the man would not have sin- 
ned and died as he did — and the story for us would lack 
much of its terrible truth and half of its tragedy. 



Children of tbe Hgc- 



fir? 



msm 



HAVE been reading the " Last Letters of Aubrey 
Beardsley." A strange book, full of a sort of 
macabre interest. Not really a book, and yet 
peculiarly suggestive as an end-of-the-century 
document. The soul of Beardsley here exposed 
with a kind of abnormal frankness that somehow recalls the 
very style of art by which he shocked and captured the 
world's regard. And the obvious purpose of it all, to show 
how he attained peace of the spirit and a quiet grave in his 
early manhood. 

Poor Beardsley was bitten deep with the malady of his age 
— he ranks with the most interesting, though not, of course, 
the greatest of its victims. He died under thirty and his 
name is known to thousands who know nothing of his art nor 
perhaps of any art whatever. To very many his name stands 
as a symbol of degeneracy. There is an intimate legend 
which attaints him with the scarlet sins of the newer hedon- 
ism. He is closely associated in the public mind with the most 
tragically disgraced literary man of modern times. In art he 
was a lawless genius, but a genius for all that, else the world 
would not have heard so much of him. The fact that counts 
is, that in a very brief life he did much striking work and for 
a time at least gave his name to a school of imitators. 
Whether his artistic influence was for good or evil, does not 
matter in this view of him — let the professors haggle about 



CHILDREN OF THE AGE 83 

that. What does matter is the fact and sum of his accom- 
plishment, which justifies the continued interest in his name. 

One naturally associates with Beardsley other ill-fated vic- 
tims of the age, such as Maupassant, Bastien Lepage, Marie 
Bashkirtseff, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, — to cite no more. 
They were all martyrs of their own talent and martyrs also 
of that ravaging malady of the heart, that devouring casuis- 
try, so peculiar to the last quarter of the Nineteenth century. 
We may be sure the disease was not confined to a few persons 
of extraordinary talent — of them we heard only because of 
their position in the public mind, and also because, as artists, 
they were bound to reveal their sufferings. Nay, we were 
the more keenly interested in their painful confessions, know- 
ing that they spoke for many condemned to bear their agon- 
ies in silence. For the world will soon turn away from an 
isolated sufferer, as from a freak on the operating table — 
let it fear or recognize the disease for its own and it will 
never weary of seeing and hearing. This commonplace truth 
explains, I think, the great and continuing interest which the 
persons above named have excited. 

All of these were unusually gifted, whether as artists or 
writers, and all strove to fulfill their talents with a suicidal 
fury of application. It seemed as if each had a prescience 
of early death and labored with fatal devotion that the 
world might not lose the fruit which was his to give. . Gen- 
erous sacrifice, which never fails to mark the rarest type of 
genius. Maupassant, perhaps the most gifted, the most terri- 
bly in earnest of all, went to work like a demoniac, pouring 
forth a whole literature of plays, poems, stories, romances, all 
in the space of ten years. Such fecundity, coupled with an 



84 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

artistic practice so admirable and a literary conscience so 
exacting, was perhaps never before witnessed in the same 
writer. But the world presently learned a greater wonder 
still — that this unwearied artist had in those ten years of 
apparently unremitting labor, lived a life that was not less 
full of romance, of passion, of variety and excitement than 
the creations of his brain. He had accomplished a twofold 
suicide — in life and in art. 

Maupassant died mad, his brain worn out by constant pro- 
duction, his heart torn by the malady of his age, which we 
can trace in so many pages in his work. But at least he 
died without disgrace, and in this respect his fate was far 
happier than that of Oscar Wilde, his contemporary and 
equal in genius, whose brilliant career closed in the darkest 
infamy. Poor Wilde sinned greatly no doubt, — the English 
courts settled that, — though his atonement was of a piece 
with his offending. The man dies but the artist lives; and 
Wilde has work to his credit which will surely survive the 
memory of his tragic shame. 

In his last wretched days Wilde turned for consolation to 
the Catholic Church, which, with a deeper knowledge of 
human nature than her rivals can understand, still makes the 
worst sinner, if repentant, her peculiar care. Wilde became 
a Catholic and he recorded that had he but done so years 
before, the world would not have been shocked by the story 
of his disgrace. This is less a truism than a confession. At 
any rate, one is not sorry to know that the poor, broken- 
hearted wretch found sanctuary at the last and died peace- 
fully in that divine hope which he has voiced in the noblest 
of his poems. 



CHILDREN OF THE AGE 85 

Like Wilde, Beardsley became a Catholic at the last when 
he was under sentence of death from consumption, and the 
* 'Letters" are addressed to a worthy Catholic priest who 
instructed him in the faith. Beardsley was not in any sense 
a writer, and these letters were obviously written in perfect 
candor and with no thought of their ever meeting any eyes 
save the good priest's for which they were intended. All the 
same they are, as I have already said, curiously interesting, 
and they do not lack touches of genuine insight and emotion. 
The fantastic artist grew very sober in the shadow of death, 
and the riot of sensuality in which his genius had formerly 
delighted, was clean wiped from his brain. Wilde himself, 
in his last days of grace, might have penned this sentence : 

"If Heine is the great warning, Pascal is the great example 
to all artists and thinkers. He understood that to become a 
Christian the man of letters must sacrifice his gifts, just as 
Magdalen sacrificed her beauty." 

Strange language this, from an end-of-the-century deca- 
dent, whose achievement in art was that he had carried 
one step farther the suggestions of the wildest sensualism. 
But perhaps it was not the same Beardsley who made the 
pictures to "Salome" and who, through the most original, 
creative part of his career, worked like a man in the frenzy 
of satyriasis. No, it was not the same Beardsley — the sen- 
tence of premature death had turned Pan into a St. Anthony. 

Not long after penning the words I have quoted, Beards- 
ley made a sacrifice of his gifts and was received into the 
Catholic Church. Within a year thereafter he died. There 
is nothing to mar the moral of his conversion and edifying 
change of heart, except the reflection that, like so many other 



86 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

eleventh-hour penitents, he put off making a sacrifice of his 
gifts until he had no further use for them. And at the last, 
one can't help thinking that if Beardsley had not made some 
fearfully immoral pictures, this book, with the highly moral 
story of his conversion, would not have been put before the 
world. . . . 

I have mentioned Ernest Dowson, a minor poet, the singer 
of a few exquisite songs. Less talented than the others, yet a 
true child of the age and stricken at the heart with the same 
malady, Dowson owes his fame more to the memorial written 
by his friend and brother poet, Arthur Symons, than to his. 
own work, which in bulk is of the slightest. His short life 
was frightfully dissolute — Symons speaks of his drunken- 
ness with a kind of awe. It was not an occasional over-indul- 
gence with comrades of his own stamp, passing the bottle 
too often when their heads grew hot and their tongues loos- 
ened ; it was not the solitary, sodden boozing to which many 
hopeless drunkards are addicted. For weeks at a stretch 
Dowson would give himself up to a debauch with the refuse 
of the London slums, and during that time he would seem 
an utterly different being, with scarcely a hint of his normal 
self. I wish some one would explain how this brutal sottish- 
ness can co-exist with the most delicate intellectual sensibility, 
with the poet-soul. We have had many explanations of the 
puzzle, and they have only one fault — they do not explain. 

Dowson left us little, not because he drank much, but 
because he could rarely satisfy his own taste, which kept him 
as unhappy in a literary sense as his conscience did in a 
religious one. He wrote some fine sonnets to a young woman 
whose mother kept a cheap eating-house: — she married the 



CHILDREN OF THE AGE 87 

waiter. The genius of Beardsley could alone have done jus- 
tice to this grotesque romance. 

Like Beardsley, Dowson died a Catholic — he had barely 
passed thirty — but unlike Beardsley, he had expected to do so 
all his life, for he was born in the faith. Yet the faith had 
not saved him from le mal du Steele, nor had it kept him 
from the foul pit of debauchery. What it did — and this was 
much — was to give him a hope at the end. 

Oh, sad children of the age, why wait so long before com- 
ing to your Mother, the ancient Church ? She alone can heal 
your cruel wounds, self-inflicted, and bind up your bleeding 
hearts; she alone con succor you; she alone can give your 
troubled spirit rest and quiet those restless brains that would 
be asking, asking unto madness. See ! — she has balsam and 
wine for your wayfaring in this world and something that 
will fortify you for a longer journey. Hear ye the bells call- 
ing the happy faithful who have never known the hell of 
doubt ; hear ye the organ pealing forth its jubilation over the 
Eternal Sacrifice ! Come into the great House of God, found- 
ed in the faith, strong with the strength, sanctified by the 
prayer and warm with the hope of two thousand years. Come, 
make here at the altar a sacrifice of your poor human gifts 
and exchange them for undying treasures. Painter, for your 
bits of canvas, the glories of heaven; poet, for your best 
rhyme the songs of the saved. Come, though it be not until 
the last hour — yet come, come, even then ! . . . 

Whether the old Church can really give what she promises, 
I know not, but sure am I that men will go on believing to the 
end. For faith is ever more attractive than unfaith, and 



88 



PALMS OF PAPYRUS 



human nature craves a comfortable heaven; and, after all, it 
takes more courage to die in the new scientific theory of 
things than in the simple belief of the saints. And alas ! the 
cold affirmations of science can not cure nor genius itself 
satisfy the stricken children of the age. 







Cbc Black friar. 



Beware ! beware ! of the Black Friar 

Who sitteth by Norman stone, 
For he mutters his prayer in the midnight air, 

And his mass of the days that are gone. 

******* 

And whether for good or whether for ill 

It is not mine to say, 
But still to the house of Amundeville 

He abideth night and day. 

Don Juan. 

NE may wonder what my Lord Byron in the 
shades thinks of his noble grandson's perform- 
ance in summoning the obscene Furies to a final 
desecration of his grave. Surely the ghouls of 
scandal that find their congenial food in the 
shrouds of the illustrious dead, have never had richer quarry. 
True, they have already had their noses at the scent (through 
the sweet offices of an American authoress), and have even 
picked a little at the carrion; but the full body-of-death was 
never before delivered to them. 

This point has been clouded over in the public discussion of 
the infamy. It should be made clear in order that the Earl of 
Lovelace may receive his due credit. Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
Stowe's revelations were, of course, to the same purport, 
but they were based on the unsupported word of Lady Byron 




9 o PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

and some very free readings of certain passages in the poet's 
works. Everybody was shocked, nobody convinced. Mrs. 
Stowe's book was damned by universal consent and with- 
drawn from public sale. 

Lord Lovelace has about the same story to tell, and his 
revival of the horrid scandal would go for nought, were it 
not that he is himself a kind of witness against the dead. It 
would be foolish to deny that many people will as such accept 
him. There is nobody now living to share or dispute his 
preeminence in shame. Lord Lovelace should have a por- 
tion, at least, of the burden of Orestes. . . . 

Yes, there are terrible things in this darkly perplexed 
drama of the house of Byron, which make it seem like a mod- 
ern version of the old Greek tragedy. Look at the figures in 
it. A great poet — among the very greatest of his race 
— beautiful as a god, born to the highest place, the spoiled 
darling of nature and of fortune, dazzling the world with 
his gifts, drunk himself with excess of power, crowding such 
emotion and enthusiasm, such vitality and passion, such 
adventure and achievement, such a fulness of productive 
power within the short span of a life cut off in its prime, as 
have scarcely ever marked the career of another human being. 
Never have men's eyes wonderingly followed so splendid and 
lawless a comet in the sky of fame. Never was man loved 
more passionately, hated more bitterly, admired more extrav- 
agantly, praised more wildly, two damned more deeply. His 
quarrel divided the world into armed camps which still main- 
tain their hostile lines. He was the Napoleon of the intel- 
lectual world and bulked as large as the Corsican, with whom 
indeed he shared the conquest of Europe. And by Europe 



THE BLACK FRIAR 91 

he was acclaimed and almost deified when England had first 
exiled and later denied him a place in the pantheon of her 
great. 

Never, too, were great faults redeemed by grander vir- 
tues, worthy of his towering genius — virtues to which the 
eyes of those who loved him still turned with shining hope 
after each brief eclipse of his nobler self, as when the sudden 
summer storm has passed over, men seek the sun. Virtues 
which drew the hatred of his race and caste and have left his 
name as a sword and a burning brand in the world. 

Such is the chief actor in this terrible and sinister drama 
which has lately been unveiled by the perfidy of the heir of his 
blood — the son of that "Ada" whom his verse has immortal- 
ized. The remaining characters are few, which is also fatally 
in accordance with the rules of Greek tragedy. For the 
most tremendous dramas of the flesh and the spirit do not 
ask a crowd of performers; two or three persons will suffice 
and the eternal elements of love and hate. 

So here we have, besides the poet, only the unloved and 
unloving wife, who meekly discharged her bosom of its long- 
festering rancor ere she left the world ; the beloved — perhaps 
too wildly beloved — half-sister of the poet, whose memory 
(in spite of the hideous calumny laid upon her) is like a 
springing fountain of bright water in the hot desert of his 
life; and, lastly, the evil grandson in whom the ancestral 
curses of the house of Byron have found a terribly fit medium 
of execution and vengeance. It seems a circumstance of 
added horror that this parricidal slanderer should be a hoary 
old man, while the world can not imagine Byron save as he 
died, in the glory and beauty of youth. 



92 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

What madness possessed the man? Was it perhaps the 
hoarded rage and bitterness of many years, that he should 
have been compelled to live his long life without fame or 
notice, in the shadow of a mighty name? A wild enough 
theory, but such extraordinary madness as my Lord Love- 
lace's will not allow of sane conjecture. One does not pick, 
and choose his hypotheses in Bedlam. 

That my Lord Lovelace is mad doth sufficiently, indeed 
overwhelmingly, appear from his part in this shameful and 
damnable business; but, as often happens in cases of reason- 
ing dementia, the truth comes out rather in some petty detail 
than in the general conduct. Thus, at the outset, he orders 
his charges very well and maintains a semblance of dignity 
that would befit a worthier matter. One is, passingly, almost 
tempted to believe that the noble lord has been moved to 
the shocking enterprise by a compelling sense of moral and 
even filial obligation. He seems to speak more in sorrow 
than in anger and comes near to winning our sympathy, if not 
our approval. This at the threshold of his plea. But his 
malignity soon reveals itself, horrifying and disgusting us, 
and suddenly the detail crops up — the little thing for which 
intelligent alienists are always on the alert — and losing all 
control, he abandons himself to the utter freedom of his 
hatred and his madness. I refer now to the atrocious passage 
in his book in which he exults over the alleged fact revealed 
by the post-mortem examination of Byron's remains — that 
the poet's heart was found to be partly petrified or turned 
into stone! 

A pretty bauble this to play with ! There are saner men 
than my Lord Lovelace trying to seize the moon through 



THE BLACK FRIAR 93 

their grated windows, and coming very near to doing it — 
oh, very near ! 

But I should like to have a look at my Lord Lovelace's 
heart! . . . 

Lovers of Byron's fame may be glad, at least, that the 
worst has now been said and calumny can not touch the great 
poet further. Ever since his death more than eighty years ago, 
the hyenas of scandal have wrangled over his grave, shock- 
ing the world in their hunt for uncleanness. All the name- 
less things that delight to see greatness brought low, genius 
disgraced, the sanctuary of honor defiled and the virtue of 
humanity trampled in the dirt, were bidden to the feast. 
Those obscene orgies have lasted a long time : they are now 
at an end. The unclean have taken away the uncleanness, if 
such there was, and are dispersed with their foul kindred 
in the wilderness. The clean remains and all that was truly 
vital and imperishable of Byron — the legacy of his genius, 
the inspiration of his example in the cause of liberty, the 
deathless testimony of his spirit for that supreme cause, and 
his flame-hearted protest against the enthroned Sham, Mean- 
ness and Oppression which still rule the world. These 
precious bequests of Byron we have immortal and secure. As 
for the rest — 

Glory without, end 

Scattered the clouds away, and on that name attend 

The tears and praises of all time ! 



Laf cadio Ream. 




^ AS the Silence fallen upon thee, O Laf cadio, in 
that far Eastern land of strange flowers, strange 
gods and myths, where thou, grown weary of a 
world whence the spirit of romance had flown, 
didst fix thy later home? Art thou indeed gone 
forever from us, who loved thee, being of thy brave faith in 
the divinity of the human spirit, and art thou gathered to a 
strange Valhalla of thy wiser choice, — naturalized now, as 
we may of a truth believe, among the elect and heroic shades 
of old Japan? Is that voice stilled which had not its peer 
in these last lamentable days, sounding the gamut of beauty 
and joy that had almost ceased to thrill the souls of men? 
Child of Hellas and Erin, are those half-veiled eyes, that yet 
saw so deeply into the spiritual Mystery that enfolds our sen- 
suous life, forever closed to this earthly scene? Hath Beauty 
lost her chief witness and the Lyre of Prose her anointed 
bard and sacerdos? Shall we no more hearken to the 
cadences of that perfect speech which was thy birthright, 
sprung as thou wert from the poesy of two immemorial lands, 
sacred to eloquence and song? . . . 

Ill shall we bear thy loss, O Lafcadio, given over as we 
are to the rule and worship of leaden gods. Thou wert for 
us a witness against the iron Law that crushed, and ever 
crushes, our lives; against the man-made superstition which 
impudently seeks to limit the Ideal. From beyond the violet 
seas, in thy flower-crowned retreat, thou didst raise the joyous 



LAFCADIO HEARN 95 

paean of the Enfranchised. Plunged deep into mystic lore 
hidden from us, exploring a whole realm of myths and wor- 
ships of which our vain science knows nothing, thou wouldst 
smile with gentle scorn at the monstrous treadmill of creeds 
and cultures — gods and words- — where we are forever 
doomed to toil without fruit or respite. 

We hearkened to thy wondrous tales of a land whose 
babes have more of the spirit of Art than the teachers of our 
own; where love is free yet honored and decency does not 
consist in doing that privately which publicly no man dare 
avow ; where religion, in our brutal sense, does not exist, and 
where crime, again in our brutal sense, is all but unknown. 
We heard thee tell, with evermore wonder, how this people 
of Japan has gone on for hundreds, nay, thousands of years, 
producing the humblest as well as the highest virtues without 
the aid of an officious religion; how these Japanese folk have 
the wisdom of age and the simplicity of childhood, being 
simple and happy, loving peace, contented with little, respect- 
ful toward the old, tender toward the young, merciful toward 
women, submissive under just authority, and loving their 
beautiful country with a fervor of patriotism which we may 
not conceive. 

All this and more didst thou teach us, Lafcadio, in the way 
of thy gracious art, with many an exquisite fancy caught from 
the legendary love of ancient Nippon and with the ripe ful- 
ness of thy strangely blended genius. So we listened as to a 
far-brought strain of music, and were glad to hear, hailing 
thee Master — a title thou hadst proudly earned. Yet even 
as we sat at thy feet drinking in the tones of thy voice, there 
came One who touched thee quickly on the lips — and we 
knew the rest was Silence. 



96 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Peace to thee, Lafcadio, child of Erin and Hellas, adopted 
son and poet of Nippon. Thy immortality is sure as the day- 
spring; for thou sleepest in the Land of the Sunrise . . . 
and Nippon, who has never learned to forget, watches over 
thy fame. 



Lafcadio Hearn was a poet working in prose, as all true 
poets now inevitably are, a literary artist of original motive 
and distinction among the rabble of contemporary scribblers. 
For these two things a man is not easily forgiven or forgotten 
when he has passed the Styx. 

Half Irish, half Greek, the flower of this man's genius 
took unwonted hue and fragrance from his strangely blended 
paternity; the hybrid acquired a beauty new and surprising 
in a world that looks only for the stereotype. Despairing of 
the tame effects produced by regularity, Nature herself seems 
to have set an example of lawlessness. 

Lafcadio Hearn took care to avoid the conventional in the 
ordering of his life as sedulously as in the products of his 
brain. For this, the man being now dead and silent, the con- 
ventional takes a familiar revenge upon his memory. 

The conventional — lest we forget — is the consensus of 
smug souls, the taboo uttered by mediocrity, the Latin in- 
vidia whereat Flaccus flickered, with all his assurance. It has 
much the same voice in every age. 

So we are hearing that one of the very few men who both 
made and honored literature in our time was, in his daily life 
and his principles of conduct, a moral monstrosity ; a sort of 



LAFCADIO HEARN 97 

intellectual Caliban, delighting in the abnormal and the per- 
verse, especially in the sexually abnormal and the racially per- 
verse. Through the frankness of certain persons, mostly 
journalists who refrained from speaking while Hearn might 
have contradicted them, we learn that while in this country he 
made a cult of miscegenation, as it presents itself at New 
Orleans and other places in the South, consorted with ne- 
gresses of the lowest type, and devoted himself to the unclean 
mysteries of voodooism. 

These facts are cheerfully, even emulously, borne witness 
to by journalists who worked with Hearn and who shared his 
friendship and confidence. That they should make copy of 
their acquaintance (alleged) with the dead man is not, per- 
haps, of itself a censurable thing. That they may have black- 
ened him in their report is not, unluckily, without precedent 
in the way of journalism. There is, to be sure, a fine sense 
of honor among journalists and an utter freedom from the 
basest of all vices, envy — but that is not the present subject. 

We learn from the same source that Hearn's final mar- 
riage with a Japanese woman was strictly in keeping with the 
innate perversity which moved him to loathe and shun his 
own race. (She bore him children who survive their father, 
but not the less nobly did we refuse to spare their feelings.) 
Descriptions of Hearn's physical appearance to suit the pic- 
ture of moral depravity above outlined, are frankly and min- 
utely supplied. God forgive them! — the libel is such as to 
burn the heart of every man who loves and honors true 
genius. 

How such a monster could have produced the miracles of 
thought and style and fancy which are everywhere scattered 



98 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

like seed pearl in the writings of Lafcadio Hearn, your can- 
did journalists do not attempt to explain! — the thing is beyond 
their quality. • But the other thing — the legend of the man's 
debasement — they know devilish well, and they tell of it 
right pertly, so that faith is easily induced in the story. And 
the wings of the press carry the foul tale to many a quarter 
where no word of contradiction will ever find its way. For 
this is the justice of journalism. 

Notwithstanding, one plain fact, avouched by all human 
experience, may reassure the wide-scattered fraternity of 
those who prize the work and cherish the memory of Laf- 
cadio Hearn. It is this : — No man ever succeeded in writing 
himself down better or worse than he really was. You may 
write, but the condition is that you make a faithful likeness 
of yourself — nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice. 

The true Lafcadio Hearn, the shy, pitiably myopic genius 
nursed on tears, the dreamer of strange dreams, the prose 
poet of a new dower of fancy, the weaver of hitherto un- 
wrought cadences for the inner ear, the latest brave worship- 
er of truth and beauty, — where shall we look for him but in 
his enduring work? — soul and man to the essential life! 

As for the horrid changeling of the journalists, it is 
already, — with the consent of all kind hearts, — rejected and 
ground up with the refuse of yesterday's editions. . . . 

I have been reading and re-reading the work of Hearn 
and an old conviction of mine is thus reaffirmed, — that in him 
we have to reckon with one of the few men of the Nineteenth 
century who made literature that promises to endure. 

The "Life and Letters" by Elizabeth Bisland is a worthy 
piece of literary craftsmanship. The appreciation of Hearn 



LAFCADIO HEARN 99 

both as man and artist is suffused with the warmth and color 
of a generous woman's temperament. More critical and 
tempered estimates of Hearn will be written, as more and 
more he comes into his own, but none that can ever supersede 
Elizabeth Bisland's charming work. She has done well for 
her friend throughout, but her care in gathering and present- 
ing the Letters is really a priceless service to his memory and 
an addition to the treasures of literature. 

Hearn was often doubtful of his blessings, and there was 
one which he perhaps never justly estimated. I mean his re- 
lation to a small but interested circle of friends for whom he 
was moved to pour himself out with the frankness and force 
that characterize his letters. Mind, I do not say that Hearn 
failed to appreciate his friends, but I suspect that he did not 
fully realize his blessedness in having a few friends whom he 
found a real pleasure in writing to, and who challenged him, 
as it were, to the fullest self-revelation. 

Literary men nowadays are too self-conscious to write 
good letters, or they lack the talent (which is perhaps nearer 
the mark), or they prefer to telegraph, or they wish to save 
all for the shop. But we must not forget that it takes two* to 
write a real letter — one to summon and one to send it. In 
very truth, such letters as give the world delight are a real 
collaboration, though the work be signed by only one hand. 

We should not have Lamb's Letters (choicest of all the 
epistolary tribe) but for Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hazlitt, 
Procter, Manning, Cary, et at.; and we should not have 
Hearn's but for Miss Bisland and Messrs. Hendrick, Mc- 
Donald, Chamberlain, Krehbiel, and others. 

Moreover, if the credit of authorship is but for the hand 



ioo PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

that held the pen, there is honor and remembrance for the si- 
lent collaborators. 

I doubt if Hearn ever thought of his letters as a literary 
asset, yet they are being eagerly read by thousands who are 
incapable of the delicate esoteric beauty of his Japanese crea- 
tions. The reason is plain : Hearn's letters tell the most fas- 
cinating story in the world. The story of a man of true 
genius who fought a brave fight through long years against 
poverty, half-blindness and all the misfortunes of an un- 
toward fate, until he finally achieved some image of the 
Ideal that haunted him, and set his light on a hill where 
all the world might see it. The story, too, of a man who 
never took himself as a hero, nor asked to be taken as such, 
but made his hard course as pluckily as if the world's 
applause attended him. Who was never at pains to make 
himself out different from what he was, but gave a true like- 
ness of himself, which by the grace and fortune of genius, 
turns out to be an incomparable Portrait of a Man. 

These letters of Hearn are, in truth, hardly inferior to any 
in our literature. I am not sure but that they give us the 
most interesting and faithful picture of a true literary man's 
life, of his soul and his environment, that literature affords. 
Like Lamb's letters, they complement his formal literary 
work and are even superior to it on several counts, as in their 
deep human interest, their flashing fun and satire, their 
touches of quaint wisdom, their treasures of patient observa- 
tion. 

These ten or a dozen handsome volumes, then, repre- 
sent the literary bequest of Lafcadio Hearn: it was to give 



LAFCADIO HEARN 101 

these that he lived and toiled and suffered. "Give" is the 
word, for little enough he got from them in the way of com- 
pensation. No writer ever more fully exemplified the truth 
that the highest service in literature goes unpaid. Compen- 
sation of a kind there was indeed for Lafcadio Hearn, — the 
compensation that arises from the doing of one's chosen 
work, the fulfilment of one's artistic instinct, the gratification 
of that craving need of expression which is at once the joy 
and penalty of such a genius as his. But of money, or suc- 
cess in the common acceptation, there was so little for him 
that he may truly be said to have given all his work for art's 
sake. In 1903, with less than two years to live, we find him 
writing to Mrs. Wetmore (Elizabeth Bisland) : — 

"Literary work is over. When one has to meet the riddle 
of how to live, there is an end of revery and dreaming and 
all literary 'labor-of-love'. It pays not at all. A book 
brings me in about $300 — after two years' waiting. My 
last payment on four books (for six months) was $44. 
Also, in my case, good work is a matter of nervous condi- 
tion. I can't find the conditions while having to think about 
home, which is 'the most soul-satisfying of fears', according 
to Rudyard Kipling." 

But all his life he had been dedicate to the stern muses of 
Poverty and Labor. Utterly incapable of business and bar- 
gain-making — ("the moment I think of business," he says, 
"I wish I had never been born") — he could not peddle his 
precious mental wares to advantage and so abandoned every- 
thing to the harpies of the publishing trade, — glad to do it, 
too, if they would only let him correct his proofs ! This is 
the recurrent note in his private, unreserved correspondence. 



102 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

In 1899 he writes to one of his best friends, whom he chose 
as his literary executor, Paymaster Mitchell McDonald of 
the United States Navy, stationed then at Yokohoma : — 

"Don't know whether I shall appear in print again for 
several years. Anyhow I shall never write again, except 
when the spirit moves me. It doesn't pay, and what you 
call 'reputation' is a most damnable, infernal, unmitigated 
misery and humbug. . . . While every book I write 
costs me more than I can get for it> it is evident that litera- 
ture holds no possible rewards for me; and like a sensible 
person, I'm going to try to do something really good that 
won't sell." 

Let us look a little at the artist. I have heretofore set 
down my own appreciation of Lafcadio Hearn as thinker 
and writer: my purpose now is merely to indicate by ex- 
tracts from his letters the considerations by which his artis- 
tic conscience was quickened and governed. Hardly any 
writer has expressed himself more frankly and with less re- 
serve on the self-imposed canons of his art. Not Flaubert 
himself held a more rigorous conception of the function and 
obligation of the writer — the priestship of art — than this 
man who advised one of his correspondents, a young man 
debating the choice of literature as a profession, to take 
literature seriously or leave it alone! 

How seriously he took it himself, we have already seen, 
and the following extracts gleaned at hazard from his let- 
ters help us the better to understand: 

U A11 the best work is done the way ants do things — by 

tiny but untiring and regular additions." 

* * * 



LAFCADIO HEARN 103 

"Work with me is a pain — no pleasure till it is done. It 
is not voluntary; it is not agreeable. It is forced by neces- 
sity. The necessity is a curious one. The mind, in my case, 

eats itself when unemployed." 

* * * 

"I write page after page of vagaries, metaphysical, emo- 
tional, romantic, — throw them aside. Then next day I go to 
work rewriting them. I rewrite and rewrite them till they 
begin to define and arrange themselves into a whole, — and 
the result is an essay." 

"Of course, I like a little success and praise, — though a big 
success and big praise would scare me; and I find that even 
the little praise I have been getting has occasionally un- 
hinged my judgment. And I have to be very careful." 

* * * 

And hearken to this, O ye impatient acolytes in the Tem- 
ple of Literature, who dream only of golden rewards, and ye 
others, bold traffickers in a debased art, who measure 
achievement by its money price in the market: — 

"Literary success of any enduring kind is made only by 
refusing to do what publishers want, by refusing to write 
what the public wants, by refusing to accept any popular 
standard, by refusing to write anything to orderT 

"I am going to ask you simply not to come and see your 
friend, and not to ask him to see you, for at least three 
months more. I know this seems horrid — but such are the 
only conditions upon which literary work is possible, when 
combined with the duties of a professor of literature." 



io 4 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

And this, than which even the letters of Lamb yield noth- 
ing finer: — 

"My friends are much more dangerous than my enemies. 
These latter — with infinite subtlety — spin webs to keep me 
out of places where I hate to go, — and tell stories of me to 
people whom it would be vanity and vexation to meet; and 
they help me so much by their unconscious aid that I almost 
love them. They help me to maintain the isolation indis- 
pensable to quiet regularity of work * * * Blessed be 
my enemies, and forever honored all those that hate me ! 

"But my friends! — ah, my friends! They speak so beau- 
tifully of my work; they believe in it; they say they want 
more of it, — and yet they would destroy it! They do not 
know what it costs, — and they would break the wings and 
scatter the feather-dust, even as the child that only wanted 
to caress the butterfly. And they speak of communion and 
converse and sympathy and friendship, — all of which are in- 
deed precious things to others but mortally deadly to me, 
representing the breaking up of habits of industry, and the 
sin of disobedience to the Holy Ghost, — against whom sin 
shall not be forgiven, either in this life or the life to come." 

"The strong worker and thinker works and thinks by 
himself. He does not want help or sympathy or company. 

His pleasure in the work is enough." 

* * * 

"One thing is dead sure: in another generation there can 
be no living by dreaming and scheming of art; only those 
having wealth can indulge in the luxury of writing books for 
their own pleasure." 



LAFCADIO HEARN 105 

Hearn's philosophy of life, the daily human habit of the 
man, as revealed in these letters to a few chosen friends, is 
not less racy and interesting than his literary side, and it 
shows him in genial, lovable aspects that will surprise many 
who yet recall the old newspaper libels upon his personal 
character. He had strong native wit (of which he was too 
sparing in his formal literary productions) , and, for a dream- 
er, astonishing shrewdness of observation. Of him it might 
be said as of Renan, that he thought like a man and acted 
like a child. Though abnormally sensitive and shy, disliking 
society in the most limited sense, on account of his devotion 
to his work and also because of certain personal disadvan- 
tages, his affections were warm, sincere and constant. One 
cannot resist the belief, — of which indeed there is no lack of 
testimony, — that he was a true friend, a fond husband and 
father, and a genuine lover of humanity. 

This article is running beyond bounds, but I venture to 
cite a few more extracts, — always from his personal letters, 
— that shed light on the man rather than the writer : — 

"We can reach the highest life only through that self- 
separation which the experience of illness, that is, the knowl- 
edge of physical weakness, brings." 

* * * 

"How sweet the Japanese woman is! — all the possibilities 
of the race for goodness seem to be' concentrated in her." 

"My little wife said the other morning that there was a 
mezurashii kedamono in the next yard. We looked out, and 
the extraordinary animal was a goat!" 



106 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

"I have nine lives depending on my work, — wife, wife's 
mother, wife's father, wife's adopted mother, wife's father's 
father, and then servants and a Buddhist student. It wouldn't, 
do in America, but it's nothing here — no appreciable bur- 
den." 

* * * 

"Japanese women are children, of course. They perceive 
every possible shade of thought, — vexation, doubt, or pleas- 
ure, — as it passes over the face ; and they know all you do not 
tell them. If you are unhappy about anything, then they 
say, 'I will pray to the Kami-sama for my lord' — and they 
light a little lamp and clap their hands and pray. And the 
ancient gods hearken unto them ; and the heart of the foreign 
barbarian is therewith lightened and made luminous with 
sunshine." 

"It seems to me (though I am a poor judge of such mat- 
ters) that it doesn't make a man any happier to have an in- 
tellectual wife — unless he marries for society. The less in- 
tellectual, the more lovable ; so long as there is neither coarse- 
ness nor foolishness." 

* * * 

"In my home the women are all making baby-clothes, — 
funny little Japanese baby-clothes. All the tender Buddhist 
divinities who love little children have been invoked save 
one, — he who cares for them only when they are dead, and 
plays little ghostly games with them in the shadowy world." 

"We have first to learn how to live inside the eight-day 
clock of modern life without getting caught in the cogs." 



LAFCADIO HEARN 107 

"Last night my child was born, — a very strong boy with 
large black eyes. My wife is quite well. Still I had my 
anxiety, and the new experience brought to me for a moment 
with extraordinary force the knowledge of how sacred and 
terrible a thing maternity is. . . . Then I thought with 
astonishment of the possibility that men could be cruel to 
women who bore their children; and the world seemed very 
dark for a moment. When it was all over I confess I felt 
very humble and grateful to the Unknowable Power which 
had treated me so kindly, — and I said a little prayer of 
thanks, feeling quite sure it was not foolish to do so." 

"You do not laugh when you look at mountains, nor when 

you look at the sea." 

* * * 

"No man, as a general rule, shows his soul to another 
man ; — he shows it only to a woman. . . . No woman 
unveils herself to another woman — only to a man; and what 
she unveils he cannot betray. He can talk only of her body, 
if he is brute enough to wish to; the inner being of which he 
has had some glimpses can be pictured only in a language 

that he cannot use." 

* * * 

"It is only in home- relations that people are true enough to 
each other, — show what human nature is, the beauty of it, the 
divinity of it. We are otherwise all on our guard against 

each other." 

* * * 

"No man can possibly know what life means, what the 



108 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

world means, what anything means, until he has a child and 

loves it." 

* * * 

"Perhaps if my boy grows old, there will some day come 
back to him memories of his mother's dainty little world, — 
the hibachi, — the tako, — the garden, the lights of the shrine, 
— the voices and hands that shaped his thought and guided 
every little tottering step. Then he will feel very, very lone- 
some, — and be sorry he did not follow after those who loved 
him into some shadowy resting place where the Buddhas still 

smile under their moss I" 

* * * 

"I have at home a little world of about eleven people to 
whom I am Love and Light and Food. It is a very gentle 
world. It is only happy when I am happy. If I even look 
tired, it is silent and walks on tiptoe. It is a moral force. I 
dare not fret about anything when I can help it, for others 
would fret more. So I try to keep right." 



The close of Lafcadio Hearn's life was embittered by the 
loss of his position as professor of English Literature at the 
Imperial University in Tokyo, and no doubt his days were 
shortened by the terrible anxieties into which he was thus 
thrown. His state was never so bad as it appeared to his 
sensitive imagination, to his boding spirit hopelessly clouded 
by the misfortunes of his youth; and a remedy was found, 
alas! too late. His letters about this time are not cheerful 
reading, but they are of the most painful interest and they 
will ever call forth love and pity for the struggling and 
afflicted man of genius who in life had known too little of 



LAFCADIO HEARN 109 

these qualities. I quote from one letter written in this sad 
and anxious time to Mrs. Wetmore; it is especially poignant, 
but the burden is that of others. 

"You will be glad to hear that I am almost strong again, 
but I fear that I shall never be strong enough to lecture be- 
fore a general public. . . . The great and devouring 
anxiety is for some regular employ — something that will as- 
sure me the means to* live. ... I am worried about my 
boy — how to save him out of this strange world of cruelty 
and intrigue. And I dream of old ugly things — things that 
happened long ago. I am alone in an American city, and I 
have only ten cents in my pocket, — and to send off a letter 
that I must send will take three cents. That leaves me seven 
cents for the day's food!" 

Lafcadio Hearn died on September 26th, 1904, in the 
fifty- fourth year of his age. The story of his last illness and 
death, as told by his faithful Japanese wife, is most quaint 
and pathetic and marked by little touches that reveal the 
spiritual nobility of the man. True to his life-long revolt 
against the religion of gloom and sorrow, he bade her not to 
weep for him, but to buy for his coffin a little earthen flower 
pot, and to bury him in the yard of a small temple in some 
lonesome quarter. (In death as in life the man shrank from 
the world) . Then she was to play cards with their children, 
and if any people came to ask for him, she was to say that 
he had died some time before. 

Though his physical break-down was gradual and he had 
noted in himself many warnings of the Great Change at 
hand, the end came suddenly. On the eve of his death he 



no 



PALMS OF PAPYRUS 



dreamed that he had gone on a long and distant journey : the 
fulfilment came to him with no more pain or struggle than "a 
little folding of the hands to sleep". . . . 

Of him a noble Japanese has written: "Like a lotus this 
man was in his heart ... a poet, a thinker, a loving 
husband and father, and a sincere friend. Within him there 
burned something pure as the vestal fire, and in that flame 
dwelt a mind that called forth life and poetry out of the dust, 
and grasped the highest themes of human thought." 

Lafcadio Hearn lies at rest in the far Eastern land of 
Japan, among the strange people whose life he adopted, 
who gave him a home and the love of wife and children, 
whose bravery and virtue, whose national spirit, whose beau- 
tiful legends and folk-love, whose ancient and wondrous 
religion, he interpreted with perfect art and deep divining 
sympathy, for an alien world; building thereupon his chief 
title to remembrance. Few writers of our time have at- 
tained a more worthy or left a more lasting fame. 




H fellow to the Rev- Dr. Ryde< 




N literature the fable of the living ass and the 
dead lion is constantly repeating itself. I have 
just chanced upon an instance in which the ass 
displays more than his usual temerity. 

A person all unknown to fame, one Rev. 
Frederic Rowland Marvin, makes a tuppenny bid for notice 
by impeaching the integrity of Robert Louis Stevenson's 
motives in writing the celebrated Letter on Father Damien. 

Needless to recall, the Letter was addressed to the Rev. 
Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu, who had cast some very gross and 
unmerited aspersions upon the martyr priest. 

Damien, as all the world knows, was a Belgian missionary 
priest who had devoted himself to the service of the lepers at 
Molokai, and, who, contracting the disease, at the height of 
his vigorous ministry, died among them. The question of his 
saintship cannot .be taken up by the Church until a hundred 
years after his death. Meantime many people of different 
religions, and some of none at all, regard Damien as the only 
authentic saint of modern times. Robert Louis Stevenson 
was unquestionably of this opinion. 

The Rev. Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu, in a letter to a brother 
parson (the Rev. H. B. Gage) made the hideous charge that 
Damien had become infected with leprosy through sexual 
intercourse with the women lepers of Molokai ; characterized 
him as u a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted," and 
sneered at the chorus of praise which his heroic death had 



1 1 2 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

evoked. All of which was extensively circulated by religious 
papers of the Hyde denomination. 

This precious testimony came under the eye of Robert 
Louis Stevenson, who had himself visited the leper colony 
when Damien was "in his resting grave," and had collected 
the whole truth regarding him from the witnesses of his life 
and death. By an useful coincidence, the author had likewise 
seen the reverend slanderer Hyde and held converse with 
him at his "fine house in Beretania street" (Honolulu). 

The posthumous attack upon Damien by a rival but 
recreant missioner, breathing a sectarian malignity rare in our 
time, touched that fiery intrepid soul to an utterance which 
ranks with the highest proofs of his genius and the best fruits 
of the liberal spirit. His Letter on Father Damien is, in truth, 
the quintessence of Stevenson, the choice extract of his pas- 
sion and power, his deep-hearted hatred of injustice, his 
princelike contempt of meanness, his loathing scorn of re- 
ligious bigotry, his tenderness, delicacy and chivalry, — all 
conveyed in a flawless triumph of literary art. Not vainly 
did he boast : 

"If I have at all learned the trade of using words to con- 
vey truth and to arouse emotion, you have at last furnished 
me with a subject." And again: "I conceive you as a man 
quite beyond and below the reticences of civility; with what 
measure you mete, with that it shall be measured to you 
again; with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the 
foil and to plunge home." 

I can never read the Letter to Hyde without seeing a flame 
run between the lines; I never lay it down that I do not 
at once bless and damn the Rev. Dr. Hyde. But not being 



A FELLOW TO THE REV. DR. HYDE 1 13 

myself parson-led, I wish the gentleman no worse damnation 
than is assured to him in Tusitala's honest tribute. 

Well, this is the piece of work which Dr. Marvin — he is, 
it appears, a parson like the eternally disgraced Hyde — seeks 
to disparage by attainting the integrity of the knightliest fig- 
ure of modern letters. Let us see how this bold parson 
achieves the asinine exploit of kicking the dead lion and be- 
traying his folly to the world. 

After 'stating the extraordinary assumption that Steven- 
son's Letter on Father Damien "was never regarded as any- 
thing more than a striking exhibition of literary pyrotechny," 
Dr. Marvin proceeds to judgment as follows: 

"Stevenson's letter was, I am fully persuaded, more the 
work of the rhetorician than of the man. He was carried 
away by the opportunity of making a rhetorical flourish and 
impression, and so went further than his own judgment ap- 
proved. Stevenson was a man of many noble qualities, and 
conscience was not wanting as an element of power in his 
life, but his letter to Dr. Hyde was not honest, nor had it for 
any length of tinie the approval of his own inner sense of 
right and justice. He did not really believe what he wrote, 
neither did he intend to write what he did. The temptation 
from a literary point of view was great, and the writer got 
the better of the man." 

Here the parson speaks in no uncertain tone — a mere lit- 
erary man would not so frame his indictment. But what a 
gorgeous piece of impudence ! 

I would not take the Rev. Marvin too seriously, but lest 
any person with the wit of three asses should be deceived by 
his shallow effrontery, I am bound to notice it. And since the 



1 14 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Rev. Marvin has of his own free will made himself yoke- 
fellow with the infamous Hyde, it is but just that he be 
clothed with the full dignity of his election. 

To discuss the foolish question which he has raised con- 
cerning Stevenson's honesty of motive in writing the Letter 
to Dr. Hyde, would shame any man — not a parson — of com- 
mon sense. Nor is it needful in any case, the Rev. Marvin 
sufficiently putting himself out of terms in these words: "The 
temptation from a literary point of view was great, and the 
writer got the better of the man" 

Now, lovers of Stevenson have no need to be reminded 
that such was his passionate care to avoid the slightest doubt 
of his sincerity in writing as he did upon Damien and to repel 
the stock literary imputation here uttered by a worthy cham- 
pion of Hyde, that the Letter was printed originally for pri- 
vate distribution only, the public demand for it soon becom- 
ing irresistible; and that Stevenson always refused to touch a 
penny from the publication. In 1890 he wrote to a London 
publisher who wished to bring out an edition: — "The Letter 
to Dr. Hyde is yours or any man's. I will never touch a 
penny of remuneration. I do not stick at murder: I draw 
the line at cannibalism. I could not eat a penny roll that piece 
of bludgeoning had gained for me." . . . 

"If the world at all remember you" (said the Letter to 
Hyde) "on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be 
named saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to 
the Reverend H. B. Gage." 

Was ever such a sight vouchsafed to gods or men as this 
of the Rev. Dr. Marvin struggling belatedly to win for him- 
self a small title in that infamous remembrance — to snatch 



A FELLOW TO THE REV. DR. HYDE 115 

a rag from the garment of shame which the great artist 
fitted upon Dr. Hyde in his character of Devil's Advocate 
against Damien? . . . 

The defense of Damien remains one of the cherished doc- 
uments of the free spirit. I thank Dr. Marvin for having 
given me an occasion of re-reading it, and I cheerfully ac- 
cord him the grace of having moved me to perform this 
religious duty twice instead of (my usual practice) once in 
the year. I can but wonder what manner of man is he that it 
should have done him so little good ; yet I know I shall love 
it the more that its truth is thus again proven by the futile 
attacks of a spiritual fellow to Hyde. 

Yes, I re-read — as, please God, often I shall re-read — that 
true story of Damien's martyrdom, bare and tragic as Molo- 
kai itself, traced by the hand of one who had no sympathy of 
religious faith with him but only the common kinship of 
humanity — "that noble brother of mine and of all frail clay." 
I read again, with quickened pulse, of the lowly peasant 
priest, who, in obedience to the Master's call, "shut to with 
his own hand the doors of his own sepulchre !" I saw once 
more that woeful picture of the lepers' island, surrounded by 
a great waste of sea, which to those condemned wretches 
spells the black despair of infinity: — in its midst the hill with 
the dead crater, the hopeless front of precipice, the desolation 
there prepared by nature for death too hideous for men to 
look upon. Again I made that melancholy voyage to Molo- 
kai and wept with Tusitala as he sat in the boat with the two 
sisters, "bidding farewell, in humble imitation of Damien, to 
the lights and joys of human life." I shuddered to mark the 



1 1 6 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

fearful deformations of humanity that awaited us on the 
shore — the population of a nightmare — every other face a 
blot on the landscape. I saw that the place was an unspeak- 
able hell even with the hospital and other improvements, 
lacking when Damien came there and "slept that first night 
under a tree amidst his rotting brethren.' ' I visited the 
Bishop-Home, whose every cup and towel had been washed 
by the hand of "dirty Damien." I saw everywhere the tokens 
of his passage who "by one striking act of martyrdom had 
directed all men's eyes on that distressful country — who at a 
blow and the price of his life had made the place illustrious 
and public." I thought upon that great and simple renuncia- 
tion, daunting the mind with its sheer sacrifice which, better 
far than all the loud-tongued creeds, brought the living Christ 
within sight and touch and understanding. And these won- 
derful lines of Browning came into my mind with a sudden 
vividly realized meaning and pathos : — 

Remember what a martyr said 
On the rude tablet overhead: 
"I was born sickly, poor and mean, 
"A slave — no misery could screen 
"The holders of the pearl of price 
"From Caesar's envy; therefore twice 
"I fought with beasts, three times I saw 
"My children suffer by his law; 
"At last my own release was earned; 
"I was some time in being burned, 
"But at the close a Hand came through 
"The fire above my head, and drew 



A FELLOW TO THE REV. DR. HYDE 117 

"My soul to Christ, whom now I see. 
"Sergius, a brother, writes for me 
"This testimony on the wall — 
"For me, I have forgot it all." 




JMr. 6uppy. 

HERE was once, according to Mr. Dickens, a 
young man named Guppy, of 'umble circum- 
stances, who became wildly smitten with Igh 
Life, as reflected in the newspapers. He read 
the Court Circular assiduously, he cut out and 
framed the portraits of Social Celebrities; he lived in fancy 
amid the splendid scenes of his desire. Mr. Guppy special- 
ized on the Haristocracy, the most sacred institution of his 
country; the names of dukes, lords, duchesses, countesses, 
came trippingly to his tongue. The poor young man fancied 
himself in familiar habits with all those grand people, and 
this harmless delusion occasionally made him suffer, as when 
once he reproached himself with having entered into a liaison 
with a countess (Her name, sir! — never would the lips of 
Guppy reveal it.) In the main, however, Mr. Guppy was 
happy in his illusions, as the mildly mad usually are. He 
knew that he could never put his ambitions to the proof, 
owing to the sacredly exclusive character of Igh Society; and 
so he was spared trials which might have soured his sweetly 
hopeful spirit. 

I shall not deny that Mr. Guppy was a snob — he would 
have gloried in the title as identifying him, by implication, 
with the great; but I submit he was one over whom Charity 
may well drop a tear. Nay, if the word snob covered only 
such virtues and failings as those of the lamented Guppy, it 
might well be worn as a decoration of honor. 



MR. GUPPY 119 

In the pages of Dickens Mr. Guppy seldom wins more 
than a careless smile — the gloom of the surrounding tragedy 
crocks off, so to speak, upon the joyousness of Guppy. Yet 
the Master has given us nothing that better denotes his hand ; 
Mr. Guppy certifies the genius of his creator in little. 

If you think this far-fetched, look at the figure Mr. 
Guppy makes in the world to-day. See him editing the "so- 
ciety pages" of the great New York newspapers. See his 
honest efforts to foster the spirit of caste in this country — 
honest because he is himself shut out from the heaven which 
he depicts, and would sell his soul to get a card for his wife 
or daughter. See him sometimes, on another page, elo- 
quently denouncing the perils of a society of wealth, at the 
same time kissing and biting the hand of fortune. See him in 
the weeklies, those shining mirrors of public taste, which are 
entirely consecrate to the ideals of Mr. Guppy and fairly 
reek of him in editorial, picture and story. See him exalted 
to the Nth splendor in Philadelphia, where they name him 
Bok. See him in the magazines, that world which from the 
heaven above to the earth underneath declares the greatness 
of Guppy. See there in all its perfect flower the rank Ameri- 
can quintessence of Guppy — the subtle flattery of picture, the 
fawning, lick-spittle worship of the text, the hundred sur- 
faces of the Social Lie, glossed and pumiced and polished for 
those who believe themselves to form a Superior Class, and 
as a lure for the eyes of envy and desire. 

Note the phraseology of the American Guppy — his easy 
air of superiority, quite like the inherited article; his jaunty 
attempt to connect and identify the aristocracy of the Old 
World with the aristocracy of the New; his patter of names 



120 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

and titles and pedigrees; his calm ignoring of that negligible 
quantity, "the people;" his absolute conviction that the few 
hundreds or thousands for whom he speaks are alone worth 
considering and that all the millions only want to hear about 
them. Can it be that we are being led by Mr. Guppy, as a 
child would lead us? And unto what issues? . . . 

Mrs. Atherton, a woman of talent, has made a study of the 
inexhaustible Guppy. She naturalizes him in this country, 
gives him the soul of a would-be American snob, with the 
same kind of food upon which the original Guppy fed, and 
sets him to work. The results are what the critics call "har- 
rowing" — they are also good entertainment and good art; 
and the telling of the story involves an exquisite satire on the 
American social idea. One sees, too, that Mrs. Atherton is 
not herself free from the bitterness with which she engulfs 
her hero : the Marah of Guppy is over us all ! 

Mrs. Atherton's Guppy is first baited by the newspapers, 
and loses his soul in the description of social grandeurs writ- 
ten and printed by men who can not for their lives break into 
society. Then he falls heir to a little money and sets out to 
make a regular campaign at Newport. He is good-looking, 
dresses well, and his intelligence does not amount to a crime. 
Everything then seems to be in his favor, but — let me not 
spoil a story which Mrs. Atherton alone has the right 
to tell. Read it, and you will get a more acute sense of the 
great American comedy now enacting, a bit of which is here 
etched with delicious malice; you will also agree with me as 
to the importance of Mr. Guppy. 

I find much, very much, of Mr. Guppy in the palaver of 
the literary press. He is at the same time an eulogist, with 



MR. GUPPY 121 

out measure, and a depredator, without justice, of American 
literary effort. Now he vaunts the vigor of our Western lit- 
erary spirit, free from the shackles of tradition, and now he 
prostrates himself before the wooden gods of the British 
Philistia. To-day he will rank Woodrow Wilson with Hal- 
lam or Lecky, and exalt Howells above Thackeray; to-mor- 
row he will confess that we have no historian or novelist 
worthy to be named with those of the second British rank. 
The editor of a leading American review can see no hope for 
American literature, and deplores the badness of the books 
which his paper advertises by the broadside. This is called 
the literary conscience — it is really the hand of Mr. Guppy. 

The truth is, the curse of trying to seem the thing we are 
not — the essence of Guppy — is upon our literature and our 
sorry excuse for criticism, as upon our social life. We are the 
most unreal people in the world, because we don't know what 
we are nor what God wants to make of us. Of course, I speak 
only of the infinitesimal, self-conscious minority — the great 
mass of our people are all right, but they are not the artistic 
concern of Mr. ^Guppy. The literature that pretends in this 
country is always aimed at the minority, and then, through 
the collusion of the Guppys of the press with the publishing 
trade, it is worked off upon the public. This happy result 
having been achieved, Mr. Guppy exclaims against the bad- 
ness and futility of the stuff which he has helped to foist on 
the literary market. 

Now and then, God knows how, a vigorous book with the 
red corpuscle, gets written and past the line which the care 
of Mr. Guppy has established. Instantly a hue and cry is 
raised that the book is without style or literary merit and 
that the success of such a work simply argues the low level 



122 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

of taste in this country. On such rare occasions Mr. Guppy 
is not ashamed to show us his tears — and he is never so terri- 
bly humorous as then. 

The other day a man died who had written a book which 
was and remains one of the greatest successes of our time. 
It has been read by thousands and thousands of people, both 
in this country and in Europe. It was a book that emphatic- 
ally made for good. To many it brought a sense of the 
divine beauty of the Christian legend which they would not 
otherwise have gained. It was to them and will be to thou- 
sands of others unborn, "tidings of great joy." At the very 
least, it planted in their lives a little shrub of grace and heal- 
ing which casts its perfume across the years. I am myself, if 
Mr. Guppy will allow me, indifferent literary; I like a style 
as well as a story, and I believe that a good story always finds 
a style. Well, I have read a -many books in divers tongues 
and among the most precious pictures stored up therefrom 
in my memory, is the meeting of Ben-Hur with the young 
Son of Joseph, who gave him to drink. I was a boy when I 
read the book, and the boyish love I lavished upon it was, I 
am sure, worth far more than the critical apparatus I could 
now bring to the judging of it. I did not ask then if it was 
Art : I do not ask now. 

Oh, Mr. Guppy, if you could give me back those young 
feelings of joy, of pity and wonder, such as no book could 
now excite, I would almost pardon the cheap sneers which 
you and your kind fling upon that honored grave. 



H port of Hge, 




EADER, when for you as for me the wild heyday 
of youth is past, and the heart of adventure 
all but pulseless, there is yet remaining to us a 
wonderful, untried, and. especially, untrodden, 
realm of romance. When churlish Time shall 
think to retire us from the heat and zest of life, classing us, 
too prematurely, as "old boys," there is still a trick we may 
turn to his discomfiture. When the younkers club their fool- 
ish wits for a poor joke at our expense- — what is so utterly 
inane to maturity as juvenile humor, greenr-cheese pleasan- 
try, pithless, fledgeling conceits? — we who> are wise know 
that the best of the game is still for us ; nor would we change 
with the reckless spendthrifts who mock us from the vanity 
of twenty year. 

It's ho for candles, a book and bed ! 
For candles, the modern equivalent, of course. I prefer a 
strong, well-shaded lamp to electric light or gas; the rocke- 
feller burns with a steady flame, does not sputter, or dwin- 
dle, or go out entirely, leaving you in a sulphuric darkness. 
But the wick should be trimmed by the hand of her who loves 
you best in the world ; by her, too, must the reading table be 
adjusted cosily at the head of the bed, so that the incidence of 
the gently burning flame may be just right — the more 
or less in these matters is of infinite significance ; by her must 
the books and, above all, The Book, be disposed ready to the 
discriminating hand of the Sovereign Lector. 



i2 4 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Oh ! — and, of course, the pipes or cigars. No smokeless 
person hath any rights in this kingdom ; he cometh falsely by 
his investiture; he is a Bezonian without choice; a marplot 
and spy — out with him ! . . . 

As to the time of going to bed, I would say eight o'clock, 
or half after eight; not earlier nor later, though the point 
need not be strained to a finical nicety. But one can not con- 
veniently go to bed amid the daylight business of the house, 
nor before supper, nor too soon after it. I knew a man who 
perversely insisted upon going to bed at five o'clock; he 
never rose to the dignity of a true bed-reader, and that which 
is, properly used, the most delightful of indulgences, became 
in the end, to this person, a formidable dissipation. Like a 
bad mariner, he was constantly out of his reckoning and at 
last came to grief : the fact that he was a non-smoker aided 
the catastrophe. 

But assuming that all the unities have been fulfilled, that 
the Book, the Reader and the Bed are in the most fortuitous- 
ly fortunate conjunction, will you tell me that the world has 
a sweeter pleasure to bestow, a more profoundly satisfying, 
yet not enervating, luxury of indulgence? 

Recall an instant that first delicious thrill of relaxed ease, 
of blissful security, of complete physical well-being — every 
nerve telegraphing its congratulations and your spinal column 
intoning a grand sweet song of peace ! You are now between 
the snowy sheets and the Elect Lady is looking tenderly to 
the pillows, etc., while you are tasting the most exquisite of 
sensations in the back of your calves. This is the veritable 
nunc dimittis moment of the experience; you are prepared, 
soothed and dulcified for what the Greeks called enthanasy; 



A PORT OF AGE 125 

could that old classic idea of dissolution afford you a sweeter 
pang? . . . 

But, man, you're not dying like a rose in aromatic pain — 
you're simply going to bed to read. And here the Elect Lady, 
giving a final pat to the pillows, leans over, kisses you fondly 
and says, "All right now, dear?" 

To which you reply (dissembling an internal satisfaction 
violent enough to alarm the police) — "All right now, dar- 
ling, thank you — but just push the cigars a bit nearer — there. 
And be sure you tell Mary to keep the children quiet. And, 
of course, you won't forget to bring it up later — with a good 
bit of ice; so soothing after the mental excitement of a strong 
author. Thank you, dear." 

These details will often be varied — the unwedded reader 
is not, I think, steeped in such felicity, and of course there be 
instances where the married lector does not come at his desire 
so featly — but the outline remains the same. And the result 
arrives, as the French say: that is, my gentlemen comes to 
book and bed. 

Then truly is' he in that happy state described by the 
poet, — 

"The world forgetting, by the world forgot;" 
raised to the Nirvana of the mind ; close-wrapped in the eider- 
down security of his little kingdom that knoweth no treasons, 
stratagems or insurrections; in the world and yet not of it, as 
truly though in a different sense from the Apostolic one; 
tasting the pure pleasures of the intellect with a delicious 
feeling of mental detachment and at the same time a caressing 
consciousness of bodily ease ; no other troubling imperium in 



126 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

his imperio — no thief in his candle — no fly in his ointment — 
nothing but the Book and his Absoluteship ! 

It is, Socratically considered, the only rational method of 
reading — the most universally abused of all the liberal arts. 
Are there not persons who make a foolish pretence of reading 
on railway trains, or in public restaurants, or in hotel lobbies, 
or even in theatres between the acts, nay, sometimes, by a 
piece of intolerable coxcombry, during the play itself? Whip 
me such barren pretenders ! — there is not a reader among 
them all. 

I am not sure that there is higher praise (for the intel- 
lectuals) than to be called a good reader, which is to say, a 
bed-reader. For the true reader (lector in sponda) is only 
less rare than the genuine writer; his genius no less a native 
and unacquired attribute ; his setting apart from the common 
herd as clearly defined. To be a reader in this, the only 
true sense, is to belong to the Aristocracy of Intellect and to 
be assured of a philosophy which brings to age a crown of 
delight. 

No man should take up the noble habit of reading abed 
before the age of discretion, that is to say, the fortieth year, 
for at the eighth lustrum comes the dry light of reason, 
which is the true essential flame of the bed-reader, and, lack- 
ing which, he hath as little profit of his vocation as the owl at 
noonday. 

As to what he may read abed, we shall perhaps have some- 
thing to say another time. 

******* 

Some numbers back I wrote in these pages a brief essay 
on the pleasures of reading abed. Many appreciative letters 



A PORT OF AGE 127 

called forth by this article seem to prove that the most de- 
lightful of intellectual pastimes is in no likelihood of falling 
into neglect. This, too, in spite of the fact that the habit of 
smoking at the same time — a necessary concomitant, as I have 
shown — makes of the indulgence a "fearful joy" and occa- 
sionally creates a little business for the insurance companies. 

But there is scarcely an act of our daily life that does not 
involve some risk or peril, and the stout bed-reader (and 
smoker) will not suffer himself to be daunted by a slight acci- 
dent or so, or even a hurry call from the fire department. 
Besides, in my former article, I pointed out some precaution- 
ary measures which elderly gentlemen (in particular) might 
take in order to combine the two delicious habits of reading 
and smoking abed with reasonable safety. I would not have 
them feel too safe, however, for as stolen pleasures are 
known to be sweetest, so in this matter the bed-reader's grati- 
fication is heightened and dulcified by a titillant sense of lurk- 
ing danger. Indeed, I make no doubt that a spark now and 
then dropping in the bedclothes, or in the folds of the read- 
er's nighty, or in his whiskers (should he haply be valaneed) 
and discovered before any great damage is done or profanity 
released, adds appreciably to the pleasure of the indulgence 
and is not a thing to be sedulously guarded against. How- 
ever, this is all a matter of taste, for we know, without refer- 
ence to theology, that some persons can stand more fire than 
others. 

This point being settled, I am asked to give a list of books 
or authors suitable to the requirements of the mature bed- 
reader (there are no others). I do not much relish the task, 
as I can not bear to have my own reading selected for me, and 



128 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

the priggish effrontery of those lettered persons who are con- 
stantly proposing lists of "best books" (in their estimation, 
forsooth ! ) moves my spleen not less than the purgatorial in- 
dustry of the Holy Office. But perhaps I may indirectly 
oblige my friends by glancing slightly at the preferences, — or 
mere crotchets, if you will, — of an irreclaimable bed-reader, 
who, being entirely quit of the vanities of careless youth, has 
now reached that mellowed philosophic age when he would 
rather lie snugly abed with a bright lamp at his pillow and a 
genial author to talk to him than do anything else in the 
world. Oh, by my faith ! 

In the first place, then, I would put books of a meditative, 
personal cast, such as have the privilege of addressing them- 
selves to the reader's intimate consciousness and of beguiling 
him into the illusion that their written thoughts and confes- 
sions are his very own. Of such favored books, beloved and 
cherished of the true bed-reader, are the great essayists or lay 
preachers, Montaigne, Bacon, Swift, Addison, Voltaire, 
Rousseau, Rochefoucauld, Macaulay, Lamb, Emerson, Car- 
lyle, Thackeray (in his Lectures and Roundabouts), Renan, 
Amiel — but I am resolved not to catalogue. These and such 
as these are emphatically thinking books, fit for the quiet 
commerce of the midnight pillow; trusted confessors of the 
soul, through whom it arrives the more perfectly to know 
itself; faithful pilots in the preplexed voyage of life ; wise and 
loving friends whose fidelity is never suspect or shaken; 
solemn and tender counselors who give us their mighty hearts 
to read; august nuncios that deliver the messages of the high 
gods. 

I would bar all modern fiction, books of the hour — that 



A PORT OF AGE 129 

swarm of summer flies — all trumpery love stories founded on 
the longings of puberty and green-sickness, all works on 
theology (except St. Augustine), political histories, cyclope- 
dias, scientific treatises, the whole accursed tribe of world's 
condensed or canned literatures and such like compilations, 
the books of Hall Caine, Marie Corelli and Andrew Car- 
negie, newspapers — that fell brood of time-devourers — and 
magazines — those pictured inanities. 

After this summary clearing of the field, the task of selec- 
tion should not be difficult ; but even at this stage the prudent 
bed-reader can not afford to go it blind. 

I would not advise books of a violently humorous charac- 
ter more recent than Rabelais, Don Quixote or Gil Bias, even 
though I may here seem to utter treason against my beloved 
Mark Twain. But I must be honest with my readers — bed- 
readers, of course — and truth compels me to say that a re- 
cumbent position is not favorable to much exercise of the dia- 
phragm, which such reading calls for. I took Huck Finn to 
bed with me once when I lay down for a long illness, and 
hung to him in spite of the doctor and the nurse, until the 
happy meeting with Tom Sawyer, when I wandered off into a 
fantastic world where fictions and realities were one. The 
doctor afterward said I might have died laughing at any time, 
and now I sometimes think that it wouldn't have been such a 
bad thing — nay, I even believe that one couldn't be struck 
with a happier kind of death. . . . 

However, I must insist that my friends shall sit up to Huck 
Finn, the Innocents and all that glorious family connection, as 
also to their co-sharers in a smiling Immortality, Mr. Pick- 
wick and Sam Weller. Nor let me forget another genial fig- 



130 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

ure who has taken a tribute of harmless mirth scarcely infe- 
rior to theirs from thousands of hearts and whom they 
would welcome to their benign fellowship — I strongly urge 
the reader who would have a care of his health, not to go to 
bed with Mr. Dooley. 

Next to the great essayists mentioned above, the poets 
offer the best reading for night and the bed — indeed I am not 
sure but that it is the only way to read certain poets. 

I am equally fond of the prose and the poetry of Heine, 
and think he furnishes a variety of entertainment which, on 
several counts, is unmatched by any writer. But Heine gives 
no rest, and one is soon overborne by the charges of his wit 
and the unceasing attacks of his terrible raillery. 

In the most intimate sense Horace is (of course) without 
a rival as a companion and comforter of the nightly pillow. 
This charming Pagan has confessed and will always confess 
the best minds of the Christian world. I know one person 
who owes his dearest mental joys, his best nocturnal consola- 
tions and the very spring of hope itself to the little great man 
of Rome. But he must be read in the original — a condition 
which unfortunately disqualifies too many readers. The songs 
of Horace, being written in the immortal tongue of Rome, 
can never become antiquated. Though the Pontifex and the 
Virgin ceased hundreds of years ago to climb the Capitolian 
hill, though the name of Anfidus is lost where its brawling 
current hurries down, still that treasure of genius endures, 
more lasting than brazen column, a joy and a refreshment 
ever to the jaded souls of men. 

Horace has the supreme and almost unique fortune to ap- 
pear always modern, his genius being of the finest quality 



A PORT OF AGE 131 

ever known and happily preserved in an unchanging tongue. 
He is, for instance, far more modern than Dante and dis- 
tinctly nearer to us than the Elizabethans. Alone, he consti- 
tutes a sufficient reason for the admirable, though sometimes 
foolishly censured, practice of reading abed. 

I do not care to read the plays of Shakespeare betwixt the 
sheets — it seems a piece of coxcombry to coolly degust the 
accumulated horrors of Macbeth and Lear while lolling on 
your back and sybaritically exploring the softest places in 
your downy kingdom — truly a case of what's Hecuba to him 
or he to Hecuba ! But I find it quite different with the Poems, 
which (I may remark) are too frequently overlooked even 
by those who pride themselves on knowing their Shakespeare. 
Lately, through the kindness of Dr. Rolfe, I so re-read 
Shakespeare's Sonnets and for the first time arrived at some- 
thing like a true sense and appreciation of their deep organ 
melodies, and at least a partial understanding of the terrible 
lawless passion which inspired those lavish outpourings of 
guilty love and remorse that witness forever the glory and 
the shame of Shakespeare. 

No doubt, the learned Dr. Rolfe had to sit up to write his 
invaluable commentary, with a thorny desk at his breast; 
how much more fortunate I to digest it with unlabored im- 
partiality, now and then calmly approving or, it may be, con- 
troverting the Doctor, but without heat; reclining at my ease, 
in a silence and abstraction so perfect that fancy could almost 
hear the living voices of the actors in this strange, repellant 
drama of the greatest of poets — stranger and more darkly 
perplexed than any which his genius gave to the stage — and 
the mind overleaped three full centuries to that memorable 

10 



132 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

English 

"Spring 
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim 
Did put a spirit of youth in every thing, 
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him I" 

Will Dr. Rolfe prepare more of these pleasant books ? I 
profess myself only too desirous of going to bed to read 
them. . . . 

Letters of memorable men and women are among the 
pleasantest and most profitable reading for the bed. There is 
so great a plenty of such books that I need not be at pains to 
specify. I may say, however, that to my humor Lamb's let- 
ters are the rarest deliclae deliciarum, the most enjoyable 
reading, for this purpose in the world. 

Dickens's letters are valuable beyond those of most later 
English moderns for their brave and hopeful spirit. 

Books of autobiography are good, so that they be not too 
veracious, like Franklin's — a defect which pertaineth not to 
the far preferable Messer Cellini. Memoirs and personal 
chronicles I would not forbid, though the Pepysian hunt has 
been run to death, out of compliment to the modern fashion 
of glorifying the Indecent Past, and is too often the mark of 
snobbery and a vulgar soul. A man shall not leave the empy- 
rean of the poets to put his eye to chamber keyholes and his 
nose to chamber pots with Samuel Pepys. 

Still, I would not deny that there be some engaging scoun- 
drels, like Cagliostro and the before mentioned Cellini, with 
whom one may have profitable commerce in bed — a thing 
that during the lives of these worthies never chanced to any 
man or, more especially, any woman. 



On Letters* 




HE pleasantest thing in the world to receive is a 
good letter. 

Our dearest literary joys are not to be weighed 
in comparison; indeed they are not at all of the 
argument, for we share them with many. But a 
letter — a true letter I would say — belongs to us in an inti- 
mate and peculiar sense; something in ourselves has sum- 
moned it, and perhaps the deepest source of our pleasure is, 
that it could not have been written to another. 

For it takes two to make a true letter — one to inspire and 
one to write it ; one to summon and one to send. 

Such a letter is the child of love, and we rightly hold our- 
selves blessed for it. A few such letters — none of us can ex- 
pect many — make shining epochs in our lives. 

But these letters are of the rarest, and I would now speak 
rather of such as we may not too uncommonly hope to re- 
ceive, supposing (egotistically) we have that in us which has 
grace to summon them. 

A genuine letter is the best gift and proof of friendship. 
No man can write it who is only half or three-quarters your 
friend; he might give you money — this he could not give. 

I have sometimes been convinced that a man was heartily 
my friend until I received a letter from him which showed 
me my error. Not indeed that such was his desire, nor could 
I point out the word or phrase that enlightened me. I knew 
— that was all. 



134 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

This will, perhaps, seem the very opposite of the truth to 
persons who have never considered the matter deeply and 
who think nothing is so easily given and obtained as a letter. 
But I am writing for those who understand. 

If you have ever been deceived in your dreams of friend- 
ship, look now over those old letters you kept, and you will 
wonder how you could have cheated yourself; the truth you 
were once blind to, stares out from every written page. It 
was there always, but your self-love would not see. 

Into every real letter the soul of the writer passes. It is 
this that gives a fabulous value to the letters of great and 
famous persons concerning whom the world is ever curious — 
makers of history, poets, warriors, kings and criminals, 
queens and courtesans, all who for good or evil cause have 
gained a lasting renown. The collectors are justified by a 
psychology which few of them can penetrate. 

The letters of some persons who have lived and of whom 
we possess not a scrap of writing, would be absolutely price- 
less. 

Is there, for example, enough worth in money to estimate 
the value of a letter written by the hand of Jesus ? Can you 
imagine anything that would so thrill the world? . . . 

Or, to take a lower and more probable instance: A First 
Folio of Shakespeare is worth several thousand dollars, and 
the owner of one never has to haggle for his price — the book 
itself is the ready money. The number of copies in the world 
is accurately known, as well as the fortunate owners. Some 
rich men are content with the distinction of possessing this 
rare volume and they would like to have the fact mentioned 
on their tombstone. Well, a genuine letter of Shakespeare's 



ON LETTERS 135 

— say to "Mr. W. HL," for example — would probably be 
worth more than all the First Folios in existence. True, the 
poet had hardly a thought or sentiment or idea that he did 
not express somewhere in his plays or poems. No matter — 
these were of public note, in the way of his calling; what the 
world wants is a look into the innermost soul of the man 
Shakespeare, who has escaped amid the glory of the poet. A 
letter ! a letter ! 

Charles Lamb offers a notable proof of the superiority of 
genuine letters over mere literary compositions. He wrote 
many letters to his friends from his high stool in Leadenhall 
street ; letters that have never been equaled for quaint humor, 
shrewd-glancing observation, kindly comment on men and 
manners, and, above all, the intimate revelation of one of 
the most charming personalities ever known. Being thrifty 
in a literary sense, and by no means a ready writer — he speaks 
of composing with "slow pain" — it was his habit to make his 
personal letters do a double service by turning them into 
essays for the press — and, generally, spoiling them. At any 
rate, I prefer the letters. 

The truth behind this matter is, that if a man be capable, 
and make a practice of writing many good letters, he will 
surely fall off in other lines of literary effort. Renan discov- 
ered this early in his career and was very sparing of letters 
which took anything out of him in a literary way. One 
might call this sort of economy, keeping the honey for the 
hive. It is not a bad plan in a thrifty sense, but this article 
can not sympathize with it, as it makes for the poverty of 
letters. 

Still, the fact doesn't matter so much, as literary people of 



136 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

the professional sort are generally bad letter-writers, for the 
reason that they bring to letter-writing the dregs of their 
minds — saving their spirit, grace, naturalness and sincerity 
for the shop. I have been astonished by the inept, spiritless 
letters of two or three authors of my acquaintance who are 
famous for their wit and brilliancy. One of them tells me 
that it is easier for him to write an article of two thousand 
words than a letter of two hundred. The assured audience 
and the certain compensation draw his power, but the letter 
doesn't seem worth while — and isn't when he's done with it. 
Still, there are exceptions, even among literary persons, and 
especially among women who, literary or unliterary, write 
the best letters in the world. Bless their kind hearts and busy 
fertile minds ! Should I ever be able to acknowledge the debt 
I owe them? — to pay it were not possible, even in dreams. 
There is dear U E. W. W.", who came, a late blessing into my 
life, just when I sorely needed such a friend, and who sends 
me frequently of her rich store of wisdom and sweetness and 
strength, though her pen knows no rest and the publishers will 
not be denied. Strange ! — I find in these gracious letters, 
alive with the breath of her spirit, something that even she is 
unable to express in her public writings — or is it the vitality 
of the personal note, the instant flow from mind to mind, that 
makes me think so? . . . There is charming U T. G.", more 
beautiful even than her poetry, who writes too seldom, 
(thriftiest she of the daughters of the Muse!), but each of 
whose joyous letters fills with light the happy week of its 
arrival. And "D. H.", who was not long ago "D. M." — 
what pleasure have I not received from her demure gayety 
and the sweet cordial note of her letters ! . . . And U E. 



ON LETTERS 



137 



R.", who was even more recently "E. H." (ah, happy he who 
won her gracious youth!) — in what book shall I find a hint 
of her tricksy humor and bewitching pertness? . . . And 
"B. A.", whose pensive spirit ever seeking the Unknown, 
often startles me with its clear divinations — the privilege of 
the white-souled. . . . And U T. S.", whose prattling pen 
has given me cheer when weary and cast down, and who is so 
near to me in faith and sympathy, though I have never looked 
into her candid eyes. And "S. B.", the sweet silent Quakeress, 
who too rarely writes, and the thought of whom often lies 
like a sinless peace upon me. But let me cite no more lest I 
tempt the envious fates by a rash disclosure of my joys. 

All these most fragrant friendships, enriching my else 
flowerless life with beauty and grace and precious consola- 
tion, — giving me indeed the rarer life of the spirit, — do I, 
though undeserving, hold . . . through letters. 







Cbe Kings. 




|T IS still summer with the kings, God save them ! 
— a summer that has lasted for many of them 
over a thousand years. They make as brave a 
show to-day as ever in the past. It is said they 
are neither loved nor feared so much as of old, 
and I know not how that may be; but of this I am sure, that 
the glory of kings is the envy of the world. The sunlight 
gilds their palaces and royal capitals and strikes through the 
many-hued windows of their cathedrals in which they deign 
to accept a homage second only to that paid to Divinity itself. 
God is in His heaven, and they are on their hundred thrones. 
And these thrones are quite as safe to-day as in the olden 
time when few or none doubted that the kings were set upon 
them by Divine Will. Thousands of armed men watch day 
and night to guard their peace. Cannon flank the entrances 
to their castles and palaces. The life of the king is the chief 
care and preoccupation of every people — many starve that he 
may live as befits his royal state — many die in battle that his 
throne may be secure. Yet it is true, as in the olden time, that 
a king falls now and then under the assassin's hand; and the 
wisdom of man has never rightly explained this seeming fail- 
ure of the providence of God. But there is a lot for kings as 
for common men, and accidents prove nothing. Kingship is 
still the best job in the world — and there are no resignations. 
Once in a while, it is true, an abdication has to be declared 
on account of the imbecility of some crowned head — but 



THE KINGS 139 

think how long kings have been breeding kings ! What won- 
der that the distemper should now and then break out in the 
royal stud? 

It is summer with the kings. They have never been a cost- 
lier luxury than they are to-day, except that they are not suf- 
fered to make war so often. Yet the world continues to pay 
the price of kings with gladness, and though we have heard 
so much of the rising tide of democracy, it has not wet the 
foot of a single throne in our time. No doubt it will sweep 
over them all some day, but our children's children shall not 
see it. There is hardly a king in Europe whose tenure is not 
quite as good as that of our glorious Republic. Kingship is 
even a better risk than when Canute set his chair in the sands 
of the shore. Wrap it up in what shape of mortality you 
please — let it look out boldly from the eyes of a real king, as 
rarely happens; let it peer from under the broken forehead 
of a fool or ogle in the glances of a hoary old Silenus, — it is 
still the one thing in the world which absolutely compels rev- 
erence. Other forms of authority are discounted more and 
more ; the Pope who once had rule over kings, sees his sover- 
eignty dwindled to a garden's breadth; the chiefs of republics 
wield a precarious power, often without respect: the glory 
that hedges a king remains undiminished and unaltered. The 
kings owe much to God, and God owes something to the 
kings — when the world shall have seen the last of these, it 
will perhaps discard the old idea of Divinity. But, as I have 
said already, that will take a long, long time — so long that it 
is quite useless to form theories on the subject. 

It is summer with the kings. Nowhere such radiant, golden 
summer as in royalty-loving Germany. There big thrones and 



140 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

little thrones — such a lot of them ! — are all sound and safe — 
sounder and safer than some of the royal heads that peer out 
from them. There the play of kingship has been played with 
the best success to an audience that seldom criticizes and never 
gets tired nor steals away between the acts. If the good God 
composed this play, — as so many people piously believe, — 
then He must hold the honest Germans in special favor — as 
an author He can not but be flattered. That he does so hold 
them is evident from his permitting them to triumph over 
those incomparably better actors, the French. 

This charming, prosaic, joyous, antiquated, picturesque, 
yet somewhat dull pageant of royalty goes on in Germany 
forever. If it ever came to a stop for but one day, we may be 
sure the honest sun that has beamed approvingly upon it for 
centuries would do likewise. The people fully believe that 
God wrote the play, and they cling the more fondly to the 
belief for the reason aforesaid — that it is, like themselves, a 
little dull. And what matters the sameness of the plot or the 
occasional incapacity of the leading actors, since the proper- 
ties are as rich as ever and the stage-setting worthy of the 
best representations of the past? 

God is the favorite playwright of the German people. And 
never has He given them a prettier interlude than the mar- 
riage t'other day of the Crown Prince and the Duchess Ce- 
celia. This charming spectacle moved the admiration of the 
world and the envy of republics. It was a gala show of roy- 
alties and nobilities. At the grand performance in the Royal 
Opera House in Berlin, seventy princes and princesses sur- 
rounded the imperial family — German highnesses are reso- 
lutely opposed to race-suicide and even take unnecessary mor- 



THE KINGS 141 

ganatic precautions against it. The display of diamonds and 
jewels, of exquisite laces and gorgeous millinery, by the royal 
and noble ladies, out-tongued the praise of a hundred pens. 
Finer birds, more beautiful plumage, have not been seen since 
the best days of Versailles. The Empress Augusta Victoria, 
we read, wore a necklace of fabulous gems — ( it is whispered 
that she is grown too fat for the War Lord's taste) . The 
princesses vied with each other in exhibiting the wealth of 
their caskets. But the royal bride was unadorned, says the 
report, "save by her personal graces." What a pity that these 
graces were not the first to kindle the heart of the Crown 
Prince, who is known to have had a passion or two of the 
theatre ! 

At the wedding in the palace chapel and the after-festivi- 
ties in the White Hall, there was such a crush of royalties, 
highnesses, nobilities and excellencies, that the minute eti- 
quette of precedence was preserved only with the greatest 
difficulty. It is recorded, however, that nothing occurred to 
scandalize the Hohenzollern traditions or the Kingdom of 
Heaven. 

The gifts to these young persons (who have had the great 
kindness to be born) beggared all description. They poured 
in from all the Prussian provinces, from all the potentates of 
Europe, from the tattooed and savage sovereigns of the 
South Seas, from the long-skulled monarchs of the Melane- 
sian archipelago, from kings whose royal councils are punc- 
tuated by the jabber of apes. Japan, at the very moment 
when she was conquering a foremost place among nations, 
sent, with exquisite taste, a pair of antique silver flower 
bowls. The Sick Man of Europe begged to be remembered 



1 42 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

by the great and good friend who has nursed him through 
some bad dreams. Even the Pope, who sees in that mar- 
riage and all connected with it the triumph of Luther and 
the work of the Devil, failed not of his devoir to a brother 
sovereign. 

Still, these foreign tributes were but as a drop to the deep 
sea of German loyalty and love. For while one part of the 
nation worships a Roman Catholic God and the other a 
Protestant God, both agree in paying homage to the throne 
which supports each altar. So honest Hans sweated to express 
the fulness of his joy and duty. Substantial were his gifts. A 
hundred loyal cities joined to offer a bridal gift of a silver 
service of a thousand pieces — Hans will sweat three years in 
the making of it and longer maybe in paying for it. No mat- 
ter — payment is the proof of loyalty. When was there ever a 
king or a god that was not in constant need of money? . . . 

Yes, it is summer with the kings and never have they 
seemed safer on their hundred thrones. But now as ever in 
the long story of kingship, their safety lies not so much in 
their castles and forts, their armies and sentinels, their myriad 
spies and their hundred-handed police. Not so much in these 
things as in the sufferance of the patient people and also their 
childlike enjoyment of the old play. 

Is God the author of this play? Many a man believes it in 
Germany whose ears are not longer than they should be. 
And it seems certain that the reputation of God as a play- 
wright will last longer in Germany than elsewhere. The 
royal and noble claque is thoroughly organized and never 
misses its cue. Besides, many small but worthy people — 
prompters, scene-shifters, stage carpenters, costumers, supers 



THE KINGS 143 

and other gens du theatre — draw their living from the great 
comedy and would speedily come to grief if by any chance the 
public should tire of it. So the good God is concerned for 
these honest people as much as for his literary repute — and 
the show goes on. From time to time the end of the play is 
predicted, but it has had a famous run and it will surely keep 
the boards — while there is summer with the kings. 

i£m £fr {^% 

Some time ago I wrote that it was summer with the kings, 
but wondrous is the change wrought within a few short 
months. Now instead of golden summer, with the courtier 
sun gilding their palaces and domes and towers, and all the 
world eager to win a smile of them, a ray of royal favor, — 
there is winter, black with dread, lurid with rebellion, and 
sinister with every threat of treason and anarchy. 

Though the kings yet hold some show of sovereignty, they 
are as prisoners in their own strong places, beleaguered by the 
victorious people and feeling no trust in the very guards of 
their person. The grand palaces are closed up and deserted, 
and the splendid cathedrals, in which so often the Te Deum 
has been raised in celebration of some royal victory, are now 
dark and silent, save for the threnody of mourning bells. 

Yes, it is winter with the kings. Panic terror and wild- 
eyed unrest hold the place of that mailed security which has 
sate at scornful ease there during a thousand years. The 
kings look fearfully forth from their strong towers and cas- 
tles, marking the flames of revolution that creep steadily 
nearer and hearing the distant shouts of the advancing army 



i 4 4 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

of rebellion. No heart of grace do* the kings find in the thick- 
ness of the encompassing walls or the yet unbroken ranks of 
their soldiery. For every wind is now the courier of some 
new treason or blow at their power. Fealty is become a snare 
that watches its chance to kill or betray — he that rides forth 
with the royal command shall turn traitor ere yet he hath 
passed the shadow of the towers. It is marvelous how loy- 
alty deserts a falling king ! 

Come now the priests in their most gorgeous vestments 
and bearing their most sacred images to cheer and console 
the dejected monarch. Of their fidelity he. is at least assured, 
for to him and him alone they owe the grandeur of their 
state. But alas ! what are priests to a king who has lost his 
people? — nay, they but remind him in his bitter despair of 
that Power which "hath put down the mighty from their 
seat and hath exalted them of low degree." Idly as he had 
often marked the solemn words, they come back to him now 
with a terrible weight of meaning. Almost he could bring 
himself to spit upon these fawning priests who had ever 
feared to* show him the naked purport of the accusing text 
that now pierces his heart like a sword. And he turns away 
from their mummeries lest he should cry out against the 
treachery of their God and his who has thus abandoned him 
in his need. 

It is winter with the kings. That old habit of loyalty and 
obedience which held their thrones as if mortised and ten- 
oned in granite, has vanished in an hour. Oh, the kings can 
not see how long it took to mine and shatter their rock of 
sovereignty, and they blindly regard as the madness of a 
moment what has been the patient labor of centuries. Do 



THE KINGS 145 

not flout them in their fallen state by telling them that no 
hands wrought so* busily at the work of destruction as their 
own. Have pity on the humbled kings! 

But wait ! — all can not yet be lost. Call in the leaders of 
the people and let us pledge our kingly word anew to grant 
the things they ask. 'Tis but a moment's humiliation and 
the fools will be content and huzza themselves back into our 
royal favor. Think you we do not know the cattle? Ho, 
there! — let the varlets be shown into our presence. 

Alas, Sire ! — it is now too late. Hard though it be to credit, 
the besotted people — pardon, Sire, for reporting the accursed 
heresy— have at last abandoned that to which they fondly 
clung in anguish and misery and trial, against even the evi- 
dence and reason of their brute minds, and in spite of all that 
your royal ancestors could do to alienate and destroy — their 
faith in kings ! 

But this is madness ! — it can not be. What will the infat- 
uate, misguided wretches do without their sovereign? An- 
swer us that ! 

Craving your gracious pardon, Sire, they will do as well as 
they can. And from what we, your humble councillors, can 
learn, they expect to make shift with a saucy jade wear- 
ing a Phrygian cap, whom they name Liberty! 

It is winter with the kings, but summer with the peoples 
who have waited long enough for their turn. Lustily are 
they girded up and made ready for the gleaning. Boldly and 
unitedly they march upon the ripe and waiting fields which, 
so often sowed with their blood and sweat, they now claim 
for their very own. God grant they may bring the harvest 
home ! 



Louis the Grand. 



Yes, I like to dream of the rare old time 

When Louis the Grand was King; 
And here am I moved to say in rhyme 

What his poets might not sing — 
The masque of powder and scent and lace, 

The court with its splendors gay, 
The sly intrigues, with their wicked grace, 

And the King's own part in the play. 

— My favorite Poet. 

Among kings the star performer was easily Louis Four- 
teenth of France. He knew his role better than any crowned 
mime that has ever lived. He was perfect in every detail of 
its business, and of kings he left the largest and most flatter- 
ing memory of himself. 

The story of Louis Fourteenth has been variously told, 
and most people agree that it is one of the most interesting 
in the world. In truth, Clio has lavished upon it much of 
her art and not a little of her irony. There have been many 
attempts to depreciate Louis, or at least to measure him by 
merely human standards — without exaggeration, he was God 
to his own world as much as Caesar Augustus was to his. 
The Jacobins during the Revolution, dragged him from his 
royal tomb and applying a tailor's tape to the cadaver, found 
that he was a few inches shorter than his Court believed. 
But it seems to me that they should have allowed for shrink- 
age. Voltaire the mocker who, though a courtier, was no 
great lover of kings, writes of Louis with as much respect as 



LOUIS THE GRAND 147 

he could command. The terrible rictus — the grin — flickers 
out here and there, to be sure, but for the most part Mon- 
sieur Arouet keeps his countenance well. An excellent judge 
of ability in kings or commoners, there is no doubt that he 
regarded Louis as an able man. As a mere man he was 
never thought of by his own world during the long years of 
his grandeur. People could not look at him without a sun- 
dazzle in their eyes — that glory which shut out so much waste 
of blood and treasure, such ruinous devastation of peaceful 
lands, such misery among the serfs of the soil, such terror of 
conscription stalking abroad everywhere like a universal 
Death ! 

Daudet tells a pretty story of a young dauphin of France 
who with charming naivete alluded to God as "Our Cousin." 
Louis had too much taste to make such a break, but had he 
done so we may be sure the Court would not have minded it 
and the Archbishop of Paris would have offered no objection. 
Heaven was never so near any place on this earth as it was to 
Versailles in those days. When Madame de Maintenon com- 
plained to her brother that she could not endure the burden 
of her relations with the king, he remarked, "Perhaps you 
have an idea of marrying Almighty God!" 

There were some great men in the time of Louis the 
Grand, but nobody thought of insulting the King by a com- 
parison with his sovereign majesty. . Truly the world never 
saw a more finished actor. Great generals trembled when 
ushered into the Presence and scarcely dared look above the 
King's knee. Racine, the greatest poet of the age, having 
written something which gave his Majesty offence, actually 

went home and died of grief because Louis would not speak 
11 



148 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

to him. This is the saddest of his tragedies. There was 
also a caterer who killed himself in the most heroic manner 
because a supply of fresh fish had failed to reach Versailles 
in time for the King's dinner. In short, all persons, high or 
low, shared in the illusion produced by the power and gran- 
deur, and above all, the personality of Louis. For him all 
poets sang, all sculptors carved, all painters painted. Comedy 
gave him her brightest smiles and Tragedy her rarest tears, 
while in his august cause on a hundred bloody fields the 
crested chivalry of France rode smiling to death ! 

But nowhere was the dominion of Louis so absolute as in 
the hearts of the women. For women love a King — God 
bless them ! — and worship, especially of a man, is second na- 
ture to them. Therein is the secret of their passionate attach- 
ment to royalty in every age and country, and doubtless also 
of their devotion to the church, in which the same idea is 
symbolized. 

Madame de Sevigne was as clever a woman as ever lived, 
with a most penetrating look into human nature and much 
experience of life. Yet her letters betray that she was under 
the universal illusion as to Louis, and if there be scandal in 
the Court of Heaven, it could not be whispered more deli- 
cately than Madame de Sevigne does it. 

Perhaps as an artist, the King makes the most favorable 
showing in his affairs with women, and to many readers this 
is the most attractive part of his wonderful history. How he 
contrived to carry on his amours, in view of the whole Court, 
without loss of dignity and even with perfect decorum, is 
as choice a bit as Clio has in her wallet. He never bungled, 
or hurried, or made a mess of matters, or forgot an instant 



LOUIS THE GREAT 149 

that he was King. In this, as in. all other things, he was 
truly magnificent, and the lady upon whom his choice hap- 
pened to fall, though she were among the proudest and 
loftiest in the realm, was consumingly envied for and scarcely 
deemed herself worthy of the intended honor. 

The King's choice of a new favorite was usually announced 
by a gorgeous fete designed to express the royal desire. Very 
soon everybody was in the secret, including the Queen, who 
no doubt had the earliest intimation of it, and whose admir- 
ably resigned conduct under such trying circumstances was 
perhaps as creditable to Louis as any exploit sculptured on 
his monuments. There were several successive favorites, but 
Louis was not a voluptuary, in the worst sense, and he never 
kept a half-dozen mistresses in commission at once, like the 
Merry Monarch across the Channel. Versailles under Louis 
never ceased to be a palace. Whitehall under Charles the 
Second became and long remained a brothel. A delicate odor 
of romance still hovers about the adulteries of Louis; the 
amours of the Stuart belong to the pornography of history. 

Another point of difference ; the women whom Louis had 
honored with his august affections never betrayed and dis- 
graced him like the concubines of Charles, and upon his 
leaving them, never turned to other men for consolation. 
Aut Caesar ; ant nullus! Like the lovely la Valliere they 
went into convents or like the superb Montespan withdrew 
from the Court. It was doubtless of the la Valliere that Vol- 
taire was thinking when he said that women give themselves 
to God when they are no longer acceptable to men, 

The King was very liberal to his lady friends, as well he 
might be, since it was believed that he owned all the wealth 



i 5 o PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

of the country and it cannot be denied that he spent it accord- 
ingly. He showered titles and estates upon his mistresses and 
made no distinction between his bastards and the legitimate 
royal issue. In this he proved that a strong man can over- 
rule every convention. Louis's mistresses were in turn the 
true queens of France and alliance with his bastards was 
eagerly sought by the noblest houses in the kingdom. 

Strange to say, although Louis was one of the best Catho- 
lics in the world, the Church seems to have winked at these 
little irregularities. Bossuet the eloquent never made them 
the subject of a sermon delivered in the presence of the great 
Monarch. In his old age, however, Louis did penance for 
his good times by revoking the Edict of Nantes, and causing 
a great persecution of his Protestant subjects. Some writers 
ascribe this foolish and cruel act, so contrary to Louis's nat- 
ural kindness, to the influence of Madame de Maintenon, 
who was first the mistress and then the privately wedded but 
unacknowledged wife of the King. This lady was far from 
being the most beautiful of his mistresses, but she outpointed 
them all in sense and tact. She was of a deep religious cast 
of mind, which in that age was not deemed inconsistent with 
the acceptance of such pleasures as fell to ladies of high sta- 
tion. The reconciling of piety and pleasure is in truth the 
consummate comedy of the reign of Louis the Grand. 

I have taken the somewhat original view that Louis was 
an artist, since he shaped his life in such superb fashion and 
came tardy off neither in his least nor greatest efforts. 

I add a proof : Does not the coquetry of the artist speak in 
his leaving to the world the unsolved mystery of the Man in 
the Iron Mask? 



Cbc Song Cbat is Solomon's. 




HERE is always a Jewish renaissance and that is 
why we have lately been talking about the beau- 
ty of the Jewess. 

Is is a great theme and there is none other in 
the world charged with more sweet and terrible 
poetry. 

The beauty of the Jewish woman is the eternal witness of 
the great epic of the Bible. If that divine Book were to be 
lost in some unthinkable catastrophe, it could be re-written 
wholly from the lips and eyes of Jewish beauty. 

In no long time we should have again the complete stories 
of Sarah and the daughters of Lot (those forward but prov- 
ident young persons) ; of tender-eyed Leah, of Rebekah and 
Rachel, sweet rivals in love; of Deborah and Hagar and 
Jael; of Ruth, that pensive figure whom so many generations 
have strained to see, ''standing breast-high amid the corn;" 
of Rahab the wise harlot and Jezebel the furious ; of Tamar 
who played her father-in-law Judah so shrewdly wanton a 
trick ; of Esther who fired the heart of the Persic king, saving 
honest Mordecai a painful ascension and much slaughter of 
the Chosen People; of Susanna, whom the elders surprised in 
her bath, not the first nor the last instance of the folly of old 
men; of the nameless wife of Uriah, the lust for whose per- 
fect body drove the holy king David to blood-guiltiness; of 
the Shulamite (also lacking a name) whom Solomon, son of 
David, has sung to the world's ravishment; lastly — why not? 



1 52 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

— of her who has glorified Israel among the Gentiles and 
hath honor beyond all the daughters of the earth. — Mary of 
Bethlehem. 

In this way, I repeat, the Bible could easily be put together 
again — it can never perish while a Jewish woman remains 
on the earth. 

There never was a book written (worthy of the name) 
but that was more or less directly inspired by a woman. 
Cherchez la femme is the true theory of literary origins. 

This is eminently true of the Bible with which women 
have had (and still have) more to do than with any other 
book in the history of the world. 

The beauty of Jewish women is a wine that needs no 
bush; it is the sacred treasure that kept alive the hope of the 
race during the weary ages of shame and bondage. But for 
that jealously guarded talisman, the Jew would long ago 
have lost both place and name upon the earth. 

Much of the old, consecrated, fatidic character attaches to 
the Jewish woman of the better class, even in this faithless 
day. She is honored above the wife of the Gentile and she 
is conscious of a mission which fills her with the pride of an 
immemorial race. One fancies that no other woman either 
inspires or returns love in such measure as the Jewess; that 
she has some profound joys to give whose secret she alone 
possesses. The Jew has found in his home compensations 
for all the cruelty and ignominy which he has had to suffer 
from the world. 

I admire true Jewish beauty so much that I would make a 
slight discrimination. Not all the Grecian women were 
Helens and it need not be said that the highest type of beauty 



THE SONG THAT IS SOLOMON'S 153 

among Jewish women is less often seen than praised. In 
truth, the rule holds good here, that great beauty and great 
ugliness are found side by side. 

One reason for this is, undoubtedly, the bad taste of the 
average Jew, who can not have his women fat enough and 
who, therefore, encourages such departures from the ideal 
standard as serve to caricature the natural beauty and comeli- 
ness of Hebrew women. I believe there are Jews who would 
like to grow their women in a tub, according to the mediaeval 
method of producing monstrosities. This bad taste the Jew 
comes by as a part of his Oriental inheritance — the Turk 
similarly fattens his women with all kinds of sweetmeats and 
suets. On account of this vicious taste among too many 
Jews, one often sees women of hideous corpulence at thirty 
who were types of ideal beauty at sixteen. Flesh is a good 
thing, but the Jew should not seek to suffocate himself in it, 
like Clarence in his Malmsey butt. And pus is not pulchri- 
tude. 

Let the Jewish woman, therefore, vigilantly cherish the 
wonderful beauty which has come down to her from those 
historic sisters of her race whom kings desired with a pas- 
sion that kindled the land to war, whom prophets and sages 
glorified, with whom heroes and martyrs walked and con- 
cerning whom God Himself has written many of the best 
pages in His own Book. Let her keep as near as she can to 
the ideal of loveliness which the great king, drunk with 
beauty and rapture, pictured thousands of years ago in the 
lineaments of his Beloved : — 

Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet and thy speech is 



154 



PALMS OF PAPYRUS 



comely; thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within 
thy locks. 

Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins 
which feed among the lilies. 

Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honey comb; honey 
and milk are under thy tongue and the smell of thy garments 
is as the smell of Lebanon. 

Thy neck is like a tower of ivory. Thine head upon thee 
is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple: the 
king is held in the galleries. How fair and how pleasant art 
thou, O love, for delights ! 




Dining Cditb Schopenhauer. 




WAS dining lately at Mouquin's, alone. You 
had better not so dine there, unless you have 
reached that melancholy climacteric, "a certain 
age" — (I do not plead guilty myself), It is 
not good for men to dine alone at Mouquin's 
and it is even worse for Mouquin's. All here is planned for 
sociability and the sexes — the menu is a paean of sex as 
frankly declarative as a poem of Walt Whitman's; the 
wines, the suave, lightfooted French waiters (really French), 
seeing all and nothing, the softly refulgent electric bulbs, 
the very genius of the place, all bespeak that potent instinct 
which harks back to the morning of the world. One sees 
it in the smallest matters of detail and arrangement. Else- 
where there is room and entertainment for the selfish male, 
but here — go to ! The tables are not adapted for solitary 
dining; at the very tiniest of them there is room for two. 
An arrangement that would have moved the irony of Schop- 
enhauer and signalizes the grand talent of Monsieur Mou- 
quin. To conclude, a solitary diner is an embarrassment, a 
reproach, a fly in the ointment of Monsieur Mouquin. I was 
all three to him lately, but I make him my most profound 
apologies — it shall not occur again. Why, I am now to tell. 
I was dining at Mouquin's alone, and it seemed as if the 
spirit of Schopenhauer suddenly descended upon me, who had 
been there so often, joyous and joyously companioned. The 
waiter took my order with a veiled hint of disapproval in 



156 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

his manner. He forgot, too, that he was of Mouquin's and 
therefore, anteriorly of Paris — he spoke English far too 
well for the credit of the house. At Mouquin's, you know, 
the wines and the waiters are alike imported. I knew what 
the waiter was thinking about — I felt and understood his 
subtly insinuated reproach: I was alone. There was no 
person of the opposite sex with me to double or treble the bill 
and to obey whose slightest hinted wish the garcon would fly 
with winged feet, a la Mercure. Decidedly it is a violence 
to the Parisian waiter to dine alone at Mouquin's, for it robs 
him of that pleasing incentive which is essential to the per- 
fect exhibition of his art. I do not qualify the phrase — the 
French waiter at Mouquin's is an artist, and never more so 
than when he rebukes me, wordlessly and without offence, 
for dining alone. 

However, I was a good deal worse than being alone or in 
company, for have I not said that Schopenhauer was with 
me? Do you know Schopenhauer? Is he anything more 
than a name to you, — that giant sacker of dreams, that deadly 
dissector of illusions, that pitiless puncturer of the poetry of 
the sexes, that daring exposer of Nature's most tenderly 
cherished and vigilantly guarded secrets, whose thought still 
lies like a blight upon the world? Do you know his beautiful 
theory of love which is as simple as the process of digestion 
and indeed very similar to it. Once in Berlin an enthusiast 
spoke in Schopenhauer's presence of the "immortal passion.'* 
The Master turned upon him with his frightful sneer and 
asked him if his bowels were immortal! 

When Actaeon surprised the chaste Diana at her bath, he 
was merely torn to pieces by his own hounds. Schopenhauer's 



DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 157 

punishment for betraying the deepest arcana of nature was 
worse, yet not worse than the crime merited — he was com- 
pelled to eat his own heart! . . . Not, I grant you, a 
cheerful table-mate for a dinner at Mouquin's, when the 
lights glow charmingly and the bustling waiters, the incoming 
guests, the rustling of skirts, the low laughter indicative of 
expectancy, and the confused yet agreeable murmur of voices 
— the bass or baritone of the men mingled with the lighter 
tones of the women — announce a joyous evening. Charming 
fugue, in which a delicate ear may detect every note of appe- 
tite and passion, though the players use the surd with the 
most artistic precaution. Admirable convention, by which 
men and women come in sacrificial garments, or evening at- 
tire, to worship at the shrine of the Flesh. 

But why drag in Schopenhauer? — do not some guests come 
unbidden to every banquet, and is it within our power to 
decline their company? Let us be thankful if at least we do 
not have to take them to bed with us. 

The climacteric, perhaps? My dear sir, when I tip the 
waiter to-night, I can get him to say easily that I am not a 
day over thirty. . . . 

Throughout the large room (we are upstairs, gentle 
reader) the tables are filling rapidly with well-dressed men 
and women. Nothing in their appearance, generally, to 
challenge remark; a conventional crowd of male and female 
New Yorkers, intent on a good dinner and subsidiary enjoy- 
ments. For the first time, perhaps, I notice how pleasant 
it is to observe everything at leisure, without having to talk 
to any one — you really can not see things in a detached, 



158 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

philosophic manner when you have to jabber to a pretty 
woman. 

A clerical-looking gentleman with a severe forehead, is 
one of my near neighbors. His companion is a handsome 
young woman, rather highly colored, who seems more at 
home than the forehead. A couple take the table next to 
mine; the young fellow is well-looking enough, the girl has 
the short, colorless, indeterminate, American face, with its 
pert resolve to be pretty; both are young and have eyes only 
for each other — that's the point. They sit down to the 
table as if preparing for the event of their lives; this eager 
young expectancy is smilingly noted by others than myself. 

A large man convoying three heavy matronly women who 
yet do not look like mothers — you know that familiar New 
York type — takes a favorable station against the wall where 
there is much room for eating and whence the outlook is com- 
manding. The large one perjures himself fearfully in ex- 
plaining how he had it specially reserved. I know him for a 
genial liar, and maybe the ladies do, too. These four have 
evidently come to eat and drink their fill, and to look on: 
Schopenhauer is no concern of theirs, nor they of his. 

Not so this elderly man with the dashing young woman on 
his arm — the man is too handsome to be called old, in spite 
of his white hair. The young woman has that look of com- 
plete self-possession and easy tolerance which such young 
women commonly manifest toward their elderly admirers — 
this is not romance, but what is generically termed the "sure 
thing." Schopenhauer is but faintly interested, and my eyes 
wander toward the little American type. She has had her 
second glass of wine by this time and it has hoisted a tiny 



DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 159 

flag in, her cheek. A little more and she will succeed in her 
determination to be pretty — the dinner is only half under 
way. Schopenhauer bids me note that she eats now with 
undisguised appetite, and that she fixes a steadier gaze upon 
her young man than he can always meet. Both young heads 
are together and they eat as fast as they talk — but youth 
atones for all. These two continue to draw the gaze of 
most persons in their vicinity. 

There have been one or two mild selections by the orches- 
tra, but they passed unnoticed in the first stern business of 
eating. It is a pity that artists should be subjected to such 
an indignity, but it can not well be avoided by artists who 
play for hungry people. The leader of Mouquin's orches- 
tra — perhaps I should say the orchestra at Mouquin's — is a 
young man with a high forehead and long hair. I am not a 
critic of music, like my friend James Huneker, and I am 
unhappy in the difficult vocabulary which that gifted writer 
employs. But it seems to me the conductor and first violin- 
ist at Mouquin's is an artist. A veritable artist ! No doubt 
I shall be laughed at for this — I have said that I am ignorant 
of the technique of criticism. 

When the orgasm of eating had in a degree subsided, 
Schopenhauer nudged me to* observe how the company began 
to give some attention to the music and even to applaud a lit- 
tle. Ah, it was then the young leader seemed grand and 
inspired, to me. He looked as if he did not eat much him- 
self; and his music — something from Tannhauser — fell on 
my ears like a high rebuke to these guzzling men and women. 
I do 1 not know for sure what the "motif" of it was (this 



160 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

word is from Mr. Huneker) , but the refrain sounded to me 
like, "Do not be swine ! Do not be swine I" 

The swine were in no way abashed — perhaps they did not 
understand the personal allusion. I have read somewhere in 
Mr. Huneker that the Wagnerian "motif" is often very dif- 
ficult to follow. 

We had reached the coffee, that psychic moment when the 
world is belted with happiness; when all our desires seem 
attainable; when with facile assurance we discount the most 
precious favors of love or fortune. 

"You will now observe," whispered my invisible guest, 
"that with these animals the present is the acute or critical 
moment of digestion, from which result many unclaimed 
children and much folly in the world. The edge of appetite 
has been dulled, but there is still a desire to eat, and the stage 
of repletion is yet to be reached. These animals now think 
themselves in a happy condition for the aesthetic enjoyment 
of art and even for the raptures of love. They have been 
fed." 

The terrible irony of the tone, more than the words, 
caused me to turn apprehensively; but no one was listening, 
and my hat and coat occupied the chair where should have 
sat my vis-a-vis. 

With the coming of the cordials and the lighting of cigar- 
ettes, the music changed to gayer measures. The young 
maestro's head was thrown back and in his eye flamed the 
fire of what I must call inspiration, in default of the proper 
phrase or hunekerism ; while his bow executed the most vivid 
lightning of melody. This was the moment of his nightly 
triumph, when his artist soul was in some degree compen- 



DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 161 

sated for the base milieu in which his genius had been set by 
an evil destiny. He now saw before him an alert, apprecia- 
tive audience, instead of an assembly of feeding men and 
women. For the moment he would not have changed places 
with a conductor of grand opera. 

"Note that foolish fellow's delusion, " said Schopenhauer. 
"I have exposed it a hundred times. He thinks he is playing 
to the souls, the emotions of all these people, and he plumes 
himself upon his paltry art. They also are a party to the 
cheat. He is really playing to their stomachs, and their 
applause, their appreciation, is purely sensual. Yet I will 
not deny that he is doing them a service in assisting the pro- 
cess of digestion; but it is purely physiological, sheerly ani- 
mal. The question of art does not enter at all, any more than 
the question of love does in the mind of yonder old gentle- 
man who has eaten and drunk too well and is now doting with 
senile desire upon that young woman." 

I noticed indeed that the elderly gentleman had become 
gay and amorously confidential, while his companion smiled 
often with affectecl carelessness, yet seemed to be curiously 
observant of his every word and gesture. But their affair 
was no matter for speculation. 

I glanced toward the clerical gentleman with the severe 
forehead. Both he and the forehead had relaxed perceptibly 
and there was evident that singular change which takes place 
when a man doffs the conventional mask of self. His lady 
friend seemed disposed to lead him further. No romance 
here. . . . "It is the stuff of all romances," snarled 
Schopenhauer. 

The heavy women waddled out once or twice to the retir- 



1 62 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

ing room and came back to drink anew. No man looked at 
them, save in idle curiosity — they were beyond tempt- 
ing or temptation. "These represent the consummate 
flowers of the sexual or passional instinct," remarked 
the sage. "Gross as they now seem, they were once 
young and what is called desirable. They yielded fully 
to their animal requirements — they ate, drank and loved, or 
to speak more correctly, digested — with such results as we 
now see." 

I shuddered . . . but the large women were in- 
dubitably enjoying themselves. 

There was more music — the guests applauded ever the 
more generously. The leader now condescended like a verit- 
able artist — a has le cafe! 

I noticed that my little American beauty left the room 
(without her wraps) a bit unsteadily, and came back pres- 
ently, very high in color. A drink was waiting for her, and 
she began talking with her young man as if she and he were 
alone in the world. I noticed also that the young man carried 
his liquor rather better and seemed to shrink a little under the 
eyes attracted by the girl's condition. In my ear I heard the 
sardonic whisper of Schopenhauer : 

"They call this love!" . . . 

I would rather dine with a pretty woman at Mouquin's or 
elsewhere, than with any philosopher, living or dead. Espe- 
cially Schopenhauer: a has the climacteric! 



In praise of Life. 




HAVE to thank the many loyal friends who 
gave me their sympathy and support during an 
illness that cut nearly three months out of my 
working calendar and suspended two issues of 
The Papyrus. To have learned that there 
is such a stock of pure kindness in the world, is worth even 
the price I paid for it. 

The desire of life prolongs it, say the doctors. 'Tis true, 
and when the wish for life gets its force from the strong 
motive of doing one's chosen work in the only world we 
surely know, then is Death driven back and to Life goes the 
victory. 

Oh ! Life, Life, how much better art thou than the shad- 
owy hope of an existence beyond the grave ! I can hold thee, 
taste thee, drink thee, wrap myself in thee — thou art a most 
dear reality and not a shadow. I kneel before thee and pro- 
claim myself more than ever thy true lover, believer and 
worshiper. Let me still be a joyous living pagan and I 
will not change with all the saints that have spurned thee 
and gone their pale way to Nothingness. I breathe thy 
warm, perfumed air as one newly escaped from the ante- 
chamber of Death. It is the last week of May — sweet May, 
I had thought never to see thee again! — and the whole 
world is fragrant with lilac. It is an efflorescence of life 
and hope and joy, Nature's largess after the dearth and 

desolation of winter. My soul is inundated with the golden 
12 



1 64 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

waves of light and warmth and melody. Something of the 
sweetness and vague longing of adolescence revives in my 
breast. My heart trembles with a sudden memory of old 
loves, a memory called up by the sunshine and lilac scents 
and bird music with which the glad world is running over. 
Youth smiles a sly challenge at me and love holds forth his 
ineffable promise. I am drunk with the rapture of May — 
for I live ... I live ... I live! 



Henley the brave, who not long ago captained his soul out 
into the Infinite, was moved by his experiences in hospital to 
write some of his most striking poems. No doubt there is 
matter enough for a poignant sort of poetry in the House of 
Sickness. But literary inspiration fails a man when both his 
mind and body are disintegrating. I have brought nothing 
from my white nights in the hospital, but I left there a good 
deal of myself corporeally and something — as I am ad- 
monished by a present difficulty in writing — of my admirable 
literary style. I think with pain and shame of the utter 
weakness to which I was then reduced, and I wince at the 
recollection of some concessions wrung from dismantled na- 
ture. I do not care to reflect upon the long blank hours or 
days, or weeks, during which I kept my bed in passive en- 
durance, or upon one terrible night when I waited for what 
seemed to be the End with such courage as I could command. 
According to the Christian precept, I should have seen in all 
this the hand of chastening and meekly accepted the portion 
dealt out to me. But had I yielded to this comfortable sort 



IN PRAISE OF LIFE 165 

of spiritual cowardice, I should probably not be alive to tell 
the story. Many good Christians are thus soothed out of 
this weary life into a better world, for a mental attitude of 
pious resignation is the hardest condition with which the doc- 
tor has to contend and an unrivaled fattener of graveyards. 
In the next room to mine was a fine young man who had 
undergone an operation for appendicitis. The nurses told 
me there was no hope for him, as he had been brought in too 
late — the nurses never contradict the doctors. Poor fellow, 
I could hear his every sigh and groan in the vain but heroic 
struggle he was making for life. Presently a stout clean- 
shaven man in clerical garb passed my door. It was the 
minister. He remained about ten minutes with the young 
man, who was a member of his church. When he left I 
watched from my window and saw him mount his bicycle and 
ride away. He did not return. The young man died next 
day. I made up my mind more decidedly that I would get 
better. 

As a boy I used to read in my prayer book the supplication 
against the "evil of sudden death." In this is contained the 
very essence of the Christian idea, since death being synony- 
mous with judgment, must needs appear terrible to the soul 
unprepared. Indeed a sudden death in the case of an ir- 
religious person is always hailed as a judgment by people of 
strict piety. On the other hand, the favor of heaven is 
shown by the grace of a long sickness with its leisure for re- 
pentance and spiritual amendment. No picture is so edify- 
ing in a religious sense as that of the repentant sinner, over 
whom we are told there is more rejoicing in heaven than is 



1 66 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

called forth by the triumph of the just. Especially if the 
sinner have repented barely in time to be saved — that is the 
crucial point. If he should make his peace too soon, or if 
his repentance should come tardy off, it is not difficult to 
fancy the angels cheated of their due excitement. Such a 
blunderer would, I imagine, get more celestial kicks than 
compliments. God help us! — I fear me these deathbed re- 
pentances are the sorriest farce acted in the sight of heaven. 

Yet farcical as they are, religion owes to them a great 
part of its dominon over the conscience of men. The Catho- 
lic faith, in particular, has invested the final repentance and 
absolution with a potency of appeal which few indeed are 
able to withstand. That is the meaning of the phrase, "Once 
a Catholic, always a Catholic." And there is doubtless a 
grandeur subduing the imagination in the proud position of 
the Church, that no soul need be lost which has ever known 
her sacraments. Whatever the cold reason may make of this 
assumption, we may not forget how much it has contributed 
to the peace and consolation of humanity. 

As for myself, having had two long and desperate sick- 
nesses in the course of a half-dozen years, — having been so 
near the Veil which hides the Unknown that I could have 
touched it, — my prayer now and forever shall be : Lord, 
deny us not the blessing of sudden death. Even as quickly 
as Thou pleasest, call us hence, oh Lord! 

sjs }}! ^s $ . $ 

To be at home once more in mine own place, to sit under 
the cheerful lamp with pipe and book, to taste the small 
honors of domestic sovereignty, to look forward with a quiet 
hope to the morrow's task, to watch the happy faces of the 



IN PRAISE OF LIFE 167 

children in whom my youth renews itself, and to share the 
peace of her who has so long partnered my poor account of 
joy and sorrow — all this is a blessedness which I feel none 
the less that I do not weary a benign Providence with ful- 
some praise. 

Many pious works have been written on the incomparable 
advantage of being dead, — that is, on the superior felicity 
of the life to come. The most eloquent and convincing of 
these macabre essays were composed by a set of men who had 
resigned nearly all that makes life dear to humanity. It is 
enough to say that they knew not love, the most powerful 
tie that attaches us to life. On this account their valuable 
works no longer enjoy the great popularity which they had 
in a simpler time. Indeed, the decline of this religious Cult 
of Death is one of the marks of an advancing civilization. 
No doubt it served a humane purpose in those dark ages 
which we call the Ages of Faith, when life was far more 
cruel than it now is for the mass of mankind. Amid constant 
wars, bloodshed, oppression, famine and their attendant 
evils, from which only a privileged few were exempt, what 
wonder that men turned eagerly to a gospel which to us 
seems charged with despair? So the ages of history during 
which hell was most completely and perfectly realized on 
this earth, were also those in which faith in heaven and the 
Church was universal. But with the slow growth of liberty 
and the partial emancipation of the human conscience during 
the past three centuries, there has gradually been formed a 
truer and better appreciation of life. The Cult of Death 
has lost its hold upon the masses, with the dissolution of the 
old terrible dogma of eternal punishment. Men are more in 




1 68 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

love with life at this day than ever in the past — with life, 
and love, and happiness, and freedom, all of which were 
more or less limited and tabooed in the blessed Ages of Faith. 
As Heine said, "Men will no longer be put off with promis- 
sory notes upon Heaven — they demand their share of this 
earth, God's beautiful garden." . . . 
Let us have life and ever more life ! 



ALZAC somewhere shrewdly observes the per- 
sistence of the vital spark in the sick in the 
crowded quarters of a great city where the 
strong current of human life rises to the full. 
It is a good thought and a cheering one. Life 
begets life and the desire of living: human companionship is 
almost the condition of existence. The hermits who have 
lived long in their solitude are memorable instances — be- 
cause there have been so few hermits. Secular age and health 
pass without comment in the immense human hives where 
they are too familiar to excite remark. The common notion 
that people live longer in the country than in the city, is 
wrong, like so many other received ideas: the truth is, they 
die earlier and faster in the country, and the earlier and the 
faster in direct ratio to the lack of companionship. Solitude 
is the best known aid to the madhouse and the cemetery — 
even the solitude of open fields and healthful skies. On the 
other hand, there are in the densely populated ghettos of 
Vienna, of London and of New York, surrounded by condi- 
tions that would seem to make health impossible, persons so 
old that time appears to have passed them by. 



IN PRAISE OF LIFE 169 

Do you want to live and live long? — then be where men 
and women are living, loving and propagating life. Borrow 
from the universal vital force. Draw on the common fund 
of health and energy. Drink from the full-flowing stream of 
life. Deep calls unto deep and heart unto heart. With a 
million hearts beating around you, with a million pulses chal- 
lenging and inciting your own, how can you fail to keep time 
to the great rhythmic harmony? From all these you derive 
strength and hope and encouragement; every throb of every 
one of them all is a summons to live — to live — to live ! 

Now of this hear a proof. It seemed to me, as in an evil 
dream, that I had long been sad and dejected, brooding over 
uncertain health and poisoning my blood with the black vip- 
er-doubts that strike into the very heart of life ; believing my 
heritage of length of days to be forefeited; shunning the 
cheerful society of my fellows; keeping alone with a swarm 
of morbid fears and fancies; looking on life with the lost 
gaze of one who divines everywhere an unseen but exultant 
and implacable enemy. 

Then, at last, I yielded to the bidding of a kinder spirit. I 
threw off the nightmare and mingled again with my kind. I 
went where men and women were merry with feast and 
dance, with wine and music and song. I looked for the joy 
of the human face and did not look in vain. I recovered in a 
moment my old birthright of hope and happiness. My heart, 
so long drooping, rose at the compelling summons of life 
about me : the old desire to live and love sprung up anew in 
me to hail the red flag in a woman's cheek and the bright 
challenge of her eyes. I filled my glass and at the bidding 
of beauty and joy devoted my ancient sick fears to perdition. 




1 7 o PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

I was merry with the rest, aye, merry with the maddest; — 
and since that hour I live ... I live ... I live ! 

*&* c5* *&* 

THE ONLY WAY. 

AM asked if, in my opinion, suicide is ever justi- 
fiable. 

The question is one for the individual con- 
science. Men and women are answering it with 
a dreadful yea, yea, every day, casting away 
life as they might reject a worn-out garment. 

By social consent, founded on religious feeling, suicide is 
a crime against God. It is also held to be a crime against so- 
ciety. Persons attempting suicide and failing in the act are 
subject to the rigor of the law. No legal punishment is (of 
course) provided for those who succeed, but they do not 
escape in the next world — the churches take care of that: 
all theologians agree that the suicide is eternally reprobate 
and damned. 

I dissent utterly from this inhuman teaching, while I can 
conceive of no circumstances that would make suicide justi- 
fiable for myself. For so dissenting I shall be told that I 
render myself liable to damnation. Is it not strange that a 
man should be damned for holding too favorable an opinion 
of God? 

But it may not be so bad as that — we have only some 
men's word for it. 

We are told that hardly a soul comes into the world but 
at some time or other thinks of voluntarily quitting it, and is 
only restrained by the fear of eternal punishment. 



IN PRAISE OF LIFE 171 

I would change this — I would make life here, present, 
hopeful and abundant, the restraining influence. I would pit 
Life against Death and turn my back on the kingdom of 
shadows. 

I do not defend suicide, but I plead for the many upon 
whom fate imposes this bitter destiny. 

For myself I believe that life at the very worst is too pre- 
cious a gift to throw away. Steep me in shame and sorrow 
to the very lips, exile me from the charity of my kind, pile 
on my bare head all the abuses and humiliations which hu- 
man nature is capable of inflicting or enduring — my cry shall 
still and ever be for life, more life ! 

Though the wife of my youth should betray me again and 
again, though my children prove false and dishonor my gray 
hairs, though my oldest, truest friends abandon me and I be- 
come a "fixed figure for the time of scorn to point his slow 
unmoving finger at," — still shall I cling to this boon of life — 
life— life ! 

For now I tell you, heart-burdened, weary and despairing 
ones, if only you will be patient a little longer and wait, life 
itself shall heal your every sorrow. 

I give you this Gospel of Hope, this water of refreshing 
in the arid desert of your despair — 

Life is the Healer, Life the Consoler, Life the Reconciler. 

In earlier years I used to hear the most eloquent sermons 
on the blessedness of death, which always left me cold and 
unpersuaded. To such gloomy homilies is perhaps due the 
aversion I now feel toward most preaching. No ! talk not 
to me of death, that ironic Phantom, that grisly Sophist by 
whose aid religion maintains the unworthiest part of her con- 



1 72 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

quest. I hate and abominate from my deepest soul this plau- 
sive, solemn, unctuous, lying cant of darkness and the grave. 
He that preaches fears it as much as he that hears and will 
move heaven and earth to escape the inevitable doom. Away 
with such mummery ! 

Death in the ripe course of nature is beautiful and seemly, 
but death by disease, or violence, or accident, is horrible, for 
no man should be cheated or cheat himself of his due share of 
life. And this which is now an empty axiom shall one day be 
the highest law of a better state of society than we yet dream 
of, wherein disease shall be unknown and death by violence, 
public, private, or judicial, a thing without precedent. 

My cry is for life — more life ! 

Look, ye impatient ones ! — I, too, have been down, down, 
down in those abysmal depths where hope is a mockery and 
the mercy of God despaired of; I have tasted the bitterness 
of betrayal by those most sacredly pledged to keep faith with 
me; I have known the uttermost treason of the heart; I have 
been made to feel that there was not one soul in all the living 
world joined to me by any true or lasting bond ; I have seen 
the destruction of my own house of life, that temple of the 
soul, losing which a man is homeless on the earth. 

And yet I rose out of this lowest hell of desolation, borne 
as I must believe by some late-succoring, strong-winged Angel 
of Hope — and blessed God to see again the cheerful face of 
life! 

Little children, little children, the end of all will come only 
too soon: why hasten it? The Master of Life has bidden 
you wait His summons. By my soul ! I do not believe that 
He would harshly reprove you or turn away His face should 



IN PRAISE OF LIFE 173 

you, under the goad of sorrows too great for endurance, 
come suddenly, unbidden, before Him. Yet were it better to 
stand firm like good soldiers and abide your call. 

It is most strange that while men have killed other men, 
believing themselves to be inspired of God, no man has ever 
been credited with the same belief in killing himself. The 
courts of heaven, it would seem, are thronged with murder- 
ers who have been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb; 
but you shall see no suicide there. 

Is not this a monstrous conception — one that dishonors 
God? 

Why should the sinless suicide be damned to a rayless 
Hell while some bloody Alva or cruel Calvin is crowned 
with the salvation of the just? Why should there be hope for 
the slayer of age, the ravager of innocence, the despoiler of 
the widow and the orphan, and none at all for him who 
strikes only at his own life? Does God indeed choose His 
saints with so little care, or have we not here one of those per- 
versions that harden the hearts of men and "sweet religion 
make a rhapsody of words"? Let us deny this monstrous 
teaching of narrow-hearted men who presume to speak for 
God — let us say to all such in the words of Hamlet over the 
self-drowned Ophelia: 

"I tell thee, churlish priest, 
A ministering angel shall my sister be 
When thou liest howling!" 

Again I say, you are not to take your life on any terms : 



174 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

in other words, you are not to accept defeat. It is not that I 
would brand as coward the man who boldly pushes his way 
into the Unknown — the courage of that act is so appalling 
that men have named it madness. But it is a higher courage 
to resist the fates. 

Yet — whisper ! — I do not find it hard to believe that often 
God in His mercy shows this only way, this via dolorosa, to 
some poor lost soul, some victim of man's inhumanity, un- 
able to struggle longer in the coils of fate. 

To me the most awfully pathetic figure in a world sown 
with tragedy is the man or woman, broken on the cruel rack 
of life, who makes a desperate choice to find his or her way 
alone to God. Though you plant no cross and raise no stone 
upon that grave, though you hide it away from the sight of 
men, I for one shall not deem it a grave of shame. I shall 
kneel there in spite of priestly anathemas; I shall pray for 
this poor child of earth sainted by suffering; my tears shall 
fall on the despised grave where rests, — oh, rests well at last, 
— one of the uncounted martyrs of humanity. Yes ! I see in 
that nameless grave huddled away in the potter's field a sym- 
bol of the tragedy of this life whereunto we are called with- 
out our will and whence we must not depart save in the pro- 
cess of nature. And I will believe that God rejects the poor 
defeated one lying there when I, a mere human father, feel 
my heart turned to stone against the weakest and most erring 
of my children. 




GLORIA MUNDI. 

AVE you ever really thought upon the beauty of 
this world which is passing away before your 
eyes? You have read the words, "The eye is 
not satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hear- 
ing," but have you ever thought that they might 
bear another sense than the Holy Book gives them? 

For my part, when I come to die I know what my chief 
regret will be. Not for my poor human sins, which have 
really hurt nobody save myself and most of which I will have 
forgotten. Not because I have missed the laurel which was 
the darling dream of my youth. Not because I have always 
fallen short of my ideal and, still worse, betrayed my own 
dearest hopes. Not for the selfish reason that I have never 
been able to gain that position of independence and security 
which would enable me to work with a free mind. Not for 
having failed to score in any one particular what the world 
calls a success. Not for these nor any other of the vain de- 
sires that mock the, human heart in its last agony. 

No ; I shall simply be sorry that I failed to enjoy so much 
of the beauty of this dear earth and sky, or even to mark it 
in my hurry through the days, my reckless pleasures, my stu- 
pid tasks that yielded me nothing. I shall think with utter 
bitterness of the time out of all the time given me I might 
have passed in profitably looking at the moon. Or in mark- 
ing with an eye faithful to every sign, the advance of the 
bannered host of Summer unto the scattered and whistling 
disarray of Autumn. How many of those wonderful cam- 
paigns have I really seen?— alas ! I know too well how many 
I have numbered. 



176 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

There was a rapture of flowing water that always I was 
promising myself I should one day explore to the full; and 
now I am to die without knowing it. There were days and 
weeks and months of the universe in all its glory bidding for 
my admiration; yet I saw nothing of it all. My baser senses 
solicited me beyond the cosmic marvels. I lost in hours of 
sleep, or foolish pleasure, or useless labor, spectacles of 
beauty which the world had been storing up for millions of 
ages — perhaps had not been able to produce before my brief 
day. I regret even the first years of life when the universe 
seemed only a pleasant garden to play in and the firmament 
a second roof for my father's house. Grown older but no 
wiser, I planned to watch the sky from dawn to sunset and, 
on another occasion, from sunset to dawn; but my courage or 
patience failed me for even this poor enterprise. I was a 
beggar at a feast of incomparable riches, and something 
always detained me from putting forth my hand; or I left 
the table which the high gods had spread and went eating 
husks with swine. And now I am to die hungry, self-robbed 
of my share at the banquet of immortal beauty — can Chris- 
tian penitence find anything to equal the poignancy of such a 
regret? . . . 

Yet even as I write I am cheating myself in the old bank- 
rupt fashion, for the day outside my window is like a tremu- 
lous golden fire and the world overflows with a torrent of 
green life — life that runs down from the fervid heaven and 
suspires through the pregnant earth. It is the first of June, 
when Nature, like a goddess wild with the pangs of delivery, 
moves the whole earth with her travail, filling every bosom 
with the sweet and cruel pain of desire. Now she takes ac- 



IN PRAISE OF LIFE 177 

count of nothing that does not fecundate, conceive or pro- 
duce, intent only upon securing her own immortal life. And 
though she has done this a million and a million ages, yet is 
she as keen of zest as ever; as avid for the full sum of her 
desire as when she first felt the hunger of love and life; as 
unwearied as on the morning of Creation. 

"Put away your foolish task," she seems to say. "Yet a 
few days and it and you will both be ended and forgotten. 
Come out of doors and live while the chance is left you. 
Come and learn the secret of the vital sap that is no less a 
marvel in the tiniest plant than in the race of man. If you 
can not learn that, I will teach you something else of value — 
the better that you ask me naught. Leave your silly books 
and come into the great green out-of-doors, swept clean by 
the elemental airs. Here shall you find the answer to your 
foolish question, 'What do we live for?' — Life . . . 
life . . . life!" 

THE SPRING. 

T is the' Spring again. 

Not merely by the calendar, dear children of 
mine own age, but also, I would hope, by your 
hearts : to that Spring let us say our word of wel- 
come. 
I am writing on an early day in March. It is still Winter, 
so far as snow and blow, mere scenic illusion, goes : but a cer- 
tain voiceless promise in the air unclothes the landscape of 
its remaining rigors and makes mock at the weather man's 
predictions. With the Spring at our doors we shall laugh to 
scorn the utmost rage of Boreas. Let him do< his worst — he 
must go, and quickly too ! 




178 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Yet I was not mindful of the Spring (for my thoughts 
were on a less cheerful business) until coming home t'other 
evening I noticed the lengthening of our brief twilight, — as 
if the day had been pulled out one stop; and standing to look 
at the sky with its unwonted clear space of radiance, there 
came a rush of vernal airs about my forehead, and I felt the 
fulness of the Spring within my heart. 

Oh, may the Spring ever so come to me ! . . . 

Now though a man be not as learned as Solomon in what 
some other inspired writer has called the 4 'signs of Spring,'' 
— though he be indeed but a humble suburbanite, an unblest 
amphibian, neither of city nor country, he may feel that the 
sun 'gins to be hot on the back along about noon. May see 
that the snow, melting off, leaves ic^-g pools in the road and 
common which give a cheerful brightness under the Spring 
sun. May note that the cock crows oftener and with a more 
resonant pipe than in the gray Winter dawns ; that the sap is 
rising in the willow and maple, and the pioneer robin shows 
his red breast among the sparrows brown. May mark within 
himself a stirring of sensations and desires long dormant, as 
though the old Adam had turned in his sleep. May be con- 
scious of that indefinable sense of expectancy brooding o'er 
all things betwixt earth and heaven, which heralds the re- 
birth of the year. 

The Spring in truth has a tale of its own and not the same 
tale for every man — like love itself, ever the same yet ever 
different. But of all its messages and portents I chiefly prize 
that strange quickening of the pulse, that fleeting, unaccount- 
able rapture of the heart, that feeling as though one were at 
times an aeolian harp played upon by mysterious airs, — a reed 
through which all things blow to music, — until you actually 



IN PRAISE OF LIFE 179 

have to stop now and again when walking out-of-doors, the 
ravishment and delight of it being more than you can bear. 

If you do not so feel the Spring, there is, I fear, no Spring 
for you. 

No season discourseth so wisely and witchingly to the 
heart ; none hath so much of that poignant, unutterable poetry 
for which all the poets have tuned their harps in vain. Most 
ancient of deceivers, her cuckoo note is aye potent to befool 
the world — not a wound, not a pang, not a sorrow is remem- 
bered in the healing smile of Spring. 

The truth is, we are never so much in love with life as in 
the Spring. It involves the whole of life — a man counts his 
Springs, not his Winters or Summers. It is Nature's renewal 
and confirmation of her old promise to us, which each inter- 
prets in a jealous way he would not dare confess to his neigh- 
bor. How she cheats us, and how we love the cheat ! For 
let us but admit her subtle witchery a moment, and then ( as 
sweet William hath it) our 

"state, 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth f sings hymns at heaven's gate!" 

Bankrupt in hope indeed is he to whom the Spring doth 
not fetch a new bravery of spirit, urging him to try another 
and a gayer hazard of fortune. Sick of a truth is he whose 
feeble lungs crow not with a specious health in these en- 
chanted airs. Dim is the eye that fails to mark the cheerful 
lengthening of the days. Cold and dead the heart in which 
the Spring awakes not a dream of love. 

13 



i8o 



PALMS OF PAPYRUS 



As a man turns into middle life (sorely against his will) 
I think he is apt, on looking back, to regret chiefly the 
Springs he has left behind. If there were to be a seasonal 
restitution, I can promise for one man at least that he would 
prefer certain Springs to a more than equal count of Sum- 
mers. Early Springs I mean, of course; the wonder and ro- 
mance of which pursue us as with a vain regret during all our 
after-life, so that we seem to be constantly seeking the clew 
to some beautiful and marvelous story but half revealed to 
us in a dream. 

For, in truth, the enchantment of those Springs, the loveli- 
ness and mystery and desire of them, deepen the more the 
farther we go back into our youth, until they seem but a con- 
fused yet delightful blowing of merry winds and a mere hide- 
and-seek of frolic sunshine; beyond which Garden of Faery 
it is forbidden to pass. 

Why a man should be more concerned to remember and 
treasure up his early Springs than his early Summers, this 
old child confesses himself unable to say. 

But so he feels, without knowing the reason ; and now more 
than ever, since the Spring hath again laid her hand upon 
him. 



pulvie et Umbra. 




O sadder message comes to a writer in the course 
of a year than the news of some friendly though 
unknown reader's death. Often you learn it 
only through the return of the magazine, with 
the single word "Deceased" written across the 
wrapper. It is a word to give one pause, however engrossing 
the present occupation. Here was a man or woman who, 
though personally unknown to you, was yet, it may be, in 
spiritual touch with you — perhaps the best friendship of all. 
For him or her you wrote your thoughts — since all writing is 
to an unseen but familiar audience; for him or her you told 
the story of your own mind and heart, sure of a kindly under- 
standing and sympathy — without this assurance, believe me, 
there would be little enough writing in the world. Every 
writer's message is conditioned — I would almost say dictated 
— by this invisible'but closely judging auditory. You get to 
know what your readers expect, and this in the main you try 
to give them, though often failing the mark. So the act of 
writing is a kind of tacit covenant and cooperation between 
the writer and his public. Indeed, it is not I but you who 
hold the pen ; or rather it is I who hold it but you who speak 
through it and through me. 

This relation being understood, it is but natural that a 
writer should feel a sense of grief and loss on hearing of the 
death of some one who held him to this communion of 
thought and spirit. I am not sure that this grief would be 



1 82 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

more genuine had he personally known the lost one — our 
finest friendships, like the old classic divinities, veil them- 
selves in a cloud. We wear ourselves out trying to maintain 
the common friendships of the house and street, and it is like 
matching faces with Proteus : in the end we become indiffer- 
ent — or wise. 

But here was one whom you never saw — who lived half 
the length of the continent from you, or perhaps in the next 
town — no matter, you two had never met in the body. Your 
word did, however, come to him and called forth a genial 
response ; he let you know that so far as you went he set foot 
with you. Thenceforward you marched the more boldly, 
getting grace and courage and authority from this one's silent 
friendship and approval. You figured him as one who stood 
afar off — too far for you to see his face — and waved you a 
cheery salute ; your soul hailed a fellow pilgrim. Now comes 
the word that he can go no further with you — rather, indeed, 
that he has outstripped your laggard pace and gone forward 
on the great Journey. You learn of his departure in the 
chance way I have mentioned — not being a friend in the con- 
ventional sense, the family do not think to send you any 
message or mourning card. You have but to feel that you 
are poorer by a friendship of the soul than you were yester- 
day; that you are going on, in a sense, alone and unsupported, 
for this friend was a host; that you are not to look ever 
again for his written word of praise, which brought such 
gladness to your heart, or his delicate counsel that often 
helped you to a clearer vision of things. The silent compact 
is dissolved. 

I set these lines here in loving and grateful memory of a 



PULVIS ET UMBRA 183 

few such friends of mine who died to this life during the past 
year. May they live on to higher purpose ! 



Life is a blessing, and death is no less. 

That which we call the common lot is the rarest lot. Love 
and loss and grief are for all. 

Of two men, one who loves and one who has loved and 
lost, the second is the richer: God has given him the better 
part — he holds both of earth and Heaven. 

The love that has known no loss is wholly selfish and 
human. Death alone sanctifies. 

Who has not lain down at night saying unto himself, 
"Now is the solemn hour when my own shall come back to 
me," — has not sounded the shoreless sea of love. 

I believe in life and I believe not less profoundly in death. 

I believe in a resurrection and a restoration — we can not 
lose our own. 

No man has ever yet found tongue to tell the things that 
death has taught him. No man dare reveal them fully — 'tis 
a covenant with Silence. 

A power that strikes us to our knees with infinite sorrow 
and a yearning that would reach beyond the grave, must be 
a Power Benign. 

Life divides and estranges: Death reunites and reconciles: 
Blessed be Death ! 



"Your friend is dead!" they told me, but I did not believe 
nor understand. 



1 84 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Then they led me to a darkened room, hushed and solemn 
amid the roar of New York, where I saw him lying in a 
strange yet beautiful serenity. 

No disfigurement of his manly comeliness; no trace of a 
struggle that had convulsed the watchers with pain only less 
than his. 

Roses on his manly breast — roses rich and lush as the 
young life that had sunk into a sleep so sudden, so unlooked 
for. 

Nothing to shock, nothing to appal in this worldless 
greeting to the friends of his heart. As ever in life, his per- 
sonality took and held us in its strong toil of grace — yes, 
more than ever held us now closely his own. 

Could this indeed be death? 

Ah, many a time had I hastened with joyous anticipation 
to meet him, but never had we kept a tryst like this. 

I clasped that hand whose touch so often had thrilled me 
with its kindness — oh, hand so strong and gentle of my best- 
loved friend ! It was not cold as I feared it would be, and 
surely a pulse answered to mine — he knew, oh, yes ! he knew 
that I was there. 

I kissed his calm forehead and felt no chill of death — no 
terror at the heart. He seemed but to lie in a breathless 
sleep that yet held a profound consciousness of our presence. 

Still they said he was dead, — he so tranquil, almost smiling 
and inscrutably attentive! — and the grief of women chal- 
lenged my own tears to flow. 

Yet, with my emotions tense as a bow drawn to the head, 
I could not weep; so was I held by this wonder and majesty 
they called death. And it seemed that he did not ask my 
tears in the ineffable peace of our last meeting — no, not my 



PULVIS ET UMBRA 185 

tears. But there was a gathering up of the heart which I had 
never known before, a bringing together by Memory, the 
faithful warder, of all that had made or ministered to our 
friendship, — kind looks and tones, trifles light as air mingled 
with graver matters, a country walk, a sea voyage, books 
that we had read together, snatches of talk, mutual pleasures, 
mutual interests, a hundred proofs of brotherly affection and 
sympathy, — so> Memory ran searching the years till the sum 
of my love and my loss lay before me. 

Did he know — did he feel ? Scarcely I dared to ask myself 
when the Silence breathed Yes! . . . 

Here at my elbow is the telephone into which I could 
summon his pleasant voice at will. It was but now we were 
talking and making happy plans together — I had no plans 
without him. 

Then there was a blank, and a strange voice, vibrant with 
pain, called me up and said . . . 

Oh, God ! — It can not be true ! He a giant in his youth and 
strength; he with his vast enjoyment of life, every nerve and 
muscle of him trained to the fullest energy; he struck down 
without a note of warning in the vigor of his triumphant 
manhood, while the old, the sickly and the imperfect live on? 
— No, no — this were not death, but sacrifice. 

Why, it was but yesterday I felt the vital grasp of his 
hand; listened to his brave talk, so< genial a reflex of his mind 
and spirit; basked in the brightness of his frank smile, — 
debtor as ever I was to his flowing kindness ; drank the cor- 
dial of his living presence, and took no thought of fate. 

And now they tell me he is dead — that from our account 
of life, this long sum of days and hours so dreary without 
him, he is gone forever ! Over and over must I say this, or 



1 86 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

hear the dull refrain from others ; yet the truth will not press 
home. 

For, in spite of the dread certainty, I am not always with- 
out hope of seeing him again in the pleasant ways of life 
where often we met together; where never we parted but 
with a joyous promise soon to meet again. 

This hope would be stronger, I now feel, had I not looked 
upon him in that strange peacefulness that was yet so com- 
pelling; and sometimes I wish they had not led me there. 

So hard is it to break with the dear habit of life — so reluc- 
tant the heart to believe that the silver cord has been loosed 
which bound it to another. 

Oh, my lost friend ! 

The watchers told me that they had never seen so brave a 
struggle for life. Time and again he grappled with the De- 
stroyer, like the strong athlete he was — yes, and often it 
seemed that his dauntless heart would prevail. But alas ! the 
fates willed otherwise. 

Then at last, when hope was gone, as he read in the tear- 
ful eyes of those about him, he threw up his right hand with 
a lamentable gesture, saying, — "That's all!" 

Not all, brave and true heart, for love can not lose its own, 
and thy defeat was still a victory. Thou livest now more than 
ever in the memory of those who gave thee love for love, 
yet ever lacked of thy abounding measure; to them shalt 
thou ever appear as when thou didst fall asleep in the glory 
of thy youth and strength; age can not lay its cold hand upon 
thee, and thy beloved, dying old mayhap, shall again find 
thee young. 

In that sweet hope, dear Friend of my heart, and until 
then — farewell, farewell ! 




Shadows- 

E are shadows all and shadows we pursue. This 
business of life which we make-believe to take 
so earnestly, — what is it but a moth-chase or the 
play of grotesques in a child's magic lantern? 
A sudden helter-skelter of light and shade, a 
comic jumble of figures thrown for a moment on the screen, 
and then — darkness ! 

Children of the shadow, to that Shadow we return at last; 
but the very essence of our life is fluid, evanishing always. 
The minute, the day, the hour, the year, — who can lay hands 
on them? — and yet in our humorous fashion we speak of 
these as fixed and stable things, subject to our control. Mean- 
time and all time, dream delivers us unto dream, while life 
lends to its most tangible aspects something shadowy and 
spectral, as the vapors clothe the horizon with mystery. The 
things we call realities, in our vain phrase, that enter most 
deeply into the warp of our lives, these are also dreamstuff, 
kindred of the Shadow. Our consciousness from which we 
dare to apprehend immortality, can only look backward into 
the realm of dream and shadow, or forward :nto the realm 
of shadow and dream. I am at this moment more stricken at 
the heart with the sorrow of a song that my mother crooned 
to me, a child, in the firelight many years ago, than with all 
the griefs I have since known. Shadows, all shadows ! With 
my house full of romping, laughing children, there falls now 



1 88 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

upon my heart the tiny shadow of a lost babe — and I beat 
helpless hands against the iron mystery of death. . . . 

But the living, too, are shadows, not less pitiable than they 
whom death has taken from our sight. Nay, it is more sad 
to be the shadow of a shadow than to clasp the final dark- 
ness. 

Tell me, oh dear love, where now is the face that once 
showed me all the heaven I cared to know, the form that 
made the rapture of my youth, the spell which filled my 
breast with delicious pain, the lips whose touch so coy, so 
rarely gained, was honey and myrrh and wine? Oh, say not 
that she, too, is of the Shadow ! — 

Nay, she is here at thy side and has never left thee, but is 
in all things the same — look again ! Alas ! this is not the face 
that charmed my youth, this is not the form that filled my 
dreams — and her eyes were clear as the well-springs of Para- 
dise. But oh, for pity of it, let not my poor love know that 
her dear enrapturing self, with our precious dream in which 
we drew down heaven to earth, is gone forever into the 
Shadow. . . . 

We are shadows all, living ghosts, so slight of memory 
and consciousness that we seem to die many deaths ere the 
final one. This illusion we name life is intermittent — hardly 
can we recall what happened day before yesterday. Even the 
great events of life (as we phrase them) do but feebly stamp 
our weak consciousness. By a fiction which everyone knows 
to be false, we make a pretence of feeling much and deeply. 
'Tis a handsome compliment to our common nature, but the 
truth is we rarely feel — our substance is too thin and ghost- 
like. 



SHADOWS 189 

As shadows we fly each other and are never really in con- 
tact. This is the profound deception of love, the pathos of 
the human tragedy. The forms we would clasp make them- 
selves thin air; we strain at a vacuum and a shade — aye, in 
the most sacred embraces of love we hold — nothing. Less 
hard is it to scale the walls of heaven than to compass our 
desire. But now at last we are to be satisfied, to have our fill 
of this dear presence which spells for us the yearning and 
mystery of love : — in the very rapture of possession we feel 
the eternal cheat. 

Yet while we lament ever that we can not lay hands on 
those we love, shadows that we are, no more sure are we of 
ourselves. This shadow of me eludes even myself as I am 
eluded by the shadows of others in the great phantasmal 
show around me. I know this shadow of me, volatile, uncer- 
tain, ever escaping from under the hand, and if I were not so 
busy chasing my own shadow — the evanescent Me — I should 
have more leisure for hunting other moths and shadows. 
The old Greeks figured this change and fugacity in the 
mythic Proteus; but they missed the deeper sense of it. 

There was a shadow of me last year that I had some cause 
of quarrel with and we parted unkindly. Where is it ? — gone 
forever. Wiser now, I would gladly make peace with that 
shadow — it meant honestly, I must confess, though often it 
sinned and blundered — but never more 'will it walk the earth. 
Other shadows of me have likewise escaped, leaving similar 
accounts unsettled (they never do put their affairs in order) 
— not to be settled now, I dare say, until the Great Audit. 

I would not care to recall all those shadows of myself, 
even had I the power, as I would not wish to live my life 



190 



PALMS OF PAPYRUS 



over again, without leave to change it (he is a fool or a liar 
who says otherwise) . But I may confess a weakness for One 
that vanished long ago, leaving me too soon: a shadow of 
youthful hope and high purpose that could do much to re- 
fresh this jaded heart, dared I but look upon it. Oh, kind 
Master of the Show, grant me once more to see that shadow 
on the screen ! Unworthy as I am, let me look on it again and 
strive to gather new hope from its imperishable store. I 
know it dreamed of a holier love than I have realized; of 
nobler aims than I have had strength to reach; of crowns 
and triumphs that I shall never claim. It believed only in 
good (God knows!) and since it left me, without any cause 
that I can remember, I have known much evil. Yet it is still 
the essential Me, soul of my soul, and so must it be through 
the eternities. I can not be separated from that Brightness, 
that Innocency, that Hopefulness which once was I — call it 
back for but an instant to give peace to my soul ! 
Vain appeal! — A shadow calling unto the Shadow. 




\AAiiAAAAAAim*AaAumAmmagB7 



Sitrsum Corda, 




[JHERE is a brief Latin saying which holds in two 
words the best philosophy of the human race. 
It is, Sursum corda — lift up your hearts ! 

Why despair of this world? All the joy you 
have ever known has been here. It is true there 
may be better beyond, but as Thoreau said, "One world at 
a time!" 

And now let us reason a little. Are you sure you have 
given the world a fair trial — or rather have you let it give 
you a fair trial ? Softly now : the first words will not do to 
answer this question — remember it is not I who interrogate, 
but your fate. 

Can you expect anything but failure when you lie down 
and accept defeat in advance? Anything but sorrow when 
you set your house for mourning? Anything but rejection 
when you carry dismay in your face, telling all the world of 
your hope forlorn? 

I went to 1 my friend asking cheerily and confidently for a 
thing that seemed hopeless: smiling and without a second 
thought, he gave me what I asked. Again I went to my 
friend asking humbly and with little heart of grace for a 
thing that I yet knew was hopeful : frowning, he denied my 
prayer. With what brow thou askest shalt thou be answered. 

Lift up your hearts ! 

A word in your ear: Have you ever had a trouble or a 
sorrow that would for a moment weigh with the sure knowl- 



192 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

edge that you were to die next week, next month, next year? 
Be honest now ! . . . 

A little while ago I was very ill, and it seemed to me that 
if only I could get up from my bed, nothing ever would 
trouble me again. Well, in time I was able to get up, and 
then the old worries came sneaking back, one after another. 
Even as I write, they are grinning and mowing at my elbow, 
telling me that my work is futile. I know I am happy and 
well now, but they are always trying to persuade me to the 
contrary. I know that my hope was never so reasoned and 
strong, the future never so gravely alluring; but they will 
have it that I am an utter bankrupt in my hopes and the way 
onward closed to me. I know my friends — my real friends — 
were never more true and fond and faithful than they are to- 
day — they whisper darkly of broken faith, evil suspicion and 
the treason of the soul. 

Out upon the liars ! It is I that am in fault to give them a 
moment's hearing. The broken faith, the treason, the dis- 
trust — if any such there be — are mine alone ; for in my own 
breast were these serpents hatched and the poison I drink is 
of my own brewing. 

Lift up your hearts ! 

Hast thou no cause to> be happy? — look well now. Thou 
wast sick and thou art now whole. Weary, thou didst lay 
down a beloved task, not hoping ever to take it up again : yet 
see ! it is in thy hands. Is not the wife of thy youth ever with 
thee, still fair and kind and blooming? Thou dreamest a 
haggard dream of poverty, while thy house is filled with the 
divine riches of love and ringing with the joyous mirth of 
thy children. The musicians of hope pipe to thee and thou 



SURSUM CORDA 



193 



wilt not dance; victory smiles on thee anear and thou wilt 
think only of defeat. Look ! — it is but a little way and thou 
droopest with the long wished-for haven in sight. . . . 

Lift up your hearts ! 

Yesterday the aeolian harp was silent all day in the win- 
dow, not a fugitive air wooing it to music. To-day it is wild 
with melody from every wind of the world. So shall the 
brave music of thy hopes be renewed. 

Have no care of the silent, barren yesterdays — they arc 
only good to carry away all your mistakes, all your maimed 
purposes, all your vain brooding, all your weak irresolution, 
all your cowardice. Concentrate on To-day and your soul 
shall be strong to meet To-morrow. Hope, Courage, En- 
ergy — and You ! — against whatever odds. . . . 

Lift up your hearts ! 




Seeing tbe Old Cown. 




VE been back seeing the old town. The old town 
where I served the first years of my hard ap- 
prenticeship to life — alas! not yet completed. 
The old town where, as a boy, I dreamed those 
bright early dreams whose fading into gray fu- 
tility makes the dull burden of every man's regret. 

It may be that my dreams were more varied and fantastic 
than those of the average younker, for I was the fool o' fancy 
with a poet's wild heart in my breast. God knows what I 
promised myself in that long vanished time of youth which 
yet was instantly vivified and present to me as I trod the 
streets of the old town. I felt like one about to see a ghost — 
the ghost of my young self; and I shrank consciously from 
meeting it with this bitter-sweet pang of disillusion at my 
heart. I could not more sensibly have feared a living pres- 
ence. Alas, what one of us all is worthy, after the heavy 
account of years, to confront the ghost of his candid youth? 
— what one but must bow the head before that pitying yet 
reproachful Memory? 

This feeling took such strong hold upon me that soon I 
hastened away from the too-familiar squares and corners, so 
poignantly reminiscent of that other Me, and went to the 
hotel facing Main street. But even here, seated at a window 
and elbowed by a group of story-swapping drummers, I 
could not free myself from the spell of old memories. Youth 
with its hundred voices cried to me ; the past and the present 



SEEING THE OLD TOWN 195 

became at once strangely confused yet separable; and I was 
set to the painful task of tracing and identifying my younger 
self in the crowd of passers-by. 

And I did find that boy again — oh yes ! I did find him in 
spite of the lapse of many changing years and all that Time 
has wrought within and without me since he and I were one. 
I found him, though he was long shy and hesitated to come 
out of the shadows ; holding back timidly and looking on me 
with tender yet doubtful eyes — ah God ! I knew whence the 
doubt. But at last he came fully, careless of the roaring 
drummers or knowing himself to be unseen; and I held his 
hand in mine, while a sweet sorrow beat against my heart in 
the thought of what might have been and now could never 
be. And after the kind relief of tears, we talked in whispers 
a long time there by the window, no one noticing us ; and ere 
he went back into the shadow he touched my forehead lightly 
with his lips, leaving me as one whom God has assoiled. . . . 

The old town was but little changed, only it seemed 
smaller, like all places we have known in our youth and been 
long absent from. The Main street, where the working boys 
and girls flirt and promenade in an endless chain, still 
slouched the whole length of the town, with the railroad be- 
tween it and the river ; no difference, except that it was better 
paved than in my time, and the clanging trolleys ran instead 
of the ancient bob-tailed horse-cars. There were a few new 
shops or strange names over the old ones — no other changes 
of consequence. The same old town! — the boy of twenty 
years ago would not have been phased in the least. 

But I was, and the fact was due to the changes which Time 
had written upon so many faces I had known; fair young 

n 



196 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

girls turned into full-blown matrons, vaunting their offspring 
with no lack of words, or withered old maids looking ask- 
ance and shrinking from recognition; striplings who had 
shot up into solid manhood, and whom you were puzzled to 
place; broken old men whom you recalled in their vigorous 
prime ; all the varied human derelicts of the storm and stress 
of twenty years. Oh, it makes a man think to look things 
over every five years or so in the old town. 

Certainly, if you wish to get a true line on yourself, go 
back to the old town. Nothing else will do the trick. Your 
glass is a liar leagued with your vanity. Your wife a loving 
flatterer who says the thing that is not. Your children will 
never tell you how old you are beginning to look. Your daily 
intimates and coevals are concerned to keep up the same illu- 
sion for themselves. You deceive yourself, know it and are 
happy in the deception. There is only one way for you to 
learn the u bitter, wholesome truth," or, in other words, to 
get a fair look at the clock — go back to the old town ! 

There is some humor, too, in going back, as I find from 
my visits at an interval of five or six years. Always I am most 
heartily and noisily greeted by men who have no use for me 
except to "knock" me, whom the sight or sound of my name 
exasperates, to- whom my tiny bit of success is poison, and 
who struggle on bravely with the hope of seeing me finally 
land where I deserve to be and am, as they fervently believe, 
irretrievably headed. We do each other good, for if I were 
to die, these men would lose one of the sweetest motives of 
their existence; and I, knowing this, am eager to live on and 
disappoint them. 

Last time I went back I saw one of those friendly fellows 



SEEING THE OLD TOWN 197 

at a distance of a block, and he kept his glad hand out at the 
risk of paralysis, until we came together. Then how he 
laughed with pleasure and what a grip he gave me ! I had to 
laugh with him and return his grip, so far as my feeble 
strength would allow. In an acquaintance of over twenty 
years this fellow had never offered me the slightest proof of 
his friendship, save, as I have said, to "knock" me; and now 
a dear friend of mine hung modestly back while he crushed 
me in his iron embrace. When I was going away at the end 
of my visit, this terrible enemy came to the nine o'clock train 
to see me off and spoiled the leave-taking of my real friends. 
There is irony of the same brand elsewhere, but you will not 
see it to such naked advantage as in the old town. 

The saddest experience one can have in revisiting the old 
town is to hear suddenly of the death of some friend of one's 
youth, who though separated from one by long years of 
absence, must ever share in the romance of that enchanted 
period. I was so to learn of the loss of a friend who had 
been very dear to me in the old days. Together we had 
trudged the Main street of the old town, by night and by 
day, making plans for the future, few of which were realized 
either for him or for me. 

The friendships of youth are sacred. Mature life has 
nothing to offer in their place. Men agree to like each other 
for social or business reasons; often because they fear each 
other. The heart is not touched in this hollow alliance — it is 
a pact of interest and selfishness. Youth and trust, age and 
cynicism — thus are they paired. 

I know well that one or two young friendships or frank 
elections of the heart have yielded me much of the pain and 



198 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

thrill and rapture of that sentiment between the sexes which 
we call love. I know that I was several years older ere the 
voice of a girl had leave to thrill me like the tone of this dear 
lost friend; that I suffered as keenly during an occasional 
boyish miff with him as in my first genuine love quarrels; 
that I would have risked life and limb to please him, and 
could conceive of nothing sweeter than his praise; that I can 
not think of him even now without a pain at the heart which 
I have not the skill to analyze. And though I saw little of 
him for many years and there was no attempt to follow up 
our ancient friendship — our paths lying wide apart in every 
sense — and though he died a man of middle age, I can but 
think of him, — taking no note at all of the years that lie 
between, — as a bright-haired, laughing youth ; and so mourn 
him with a sorrow of the heart which proves a silent witness 
there during all the years to the truth of our early affection. 

There is something divine, though we but dimly glimpse it, 
in the unavowed, almost unconscious persistence of these 
sacred ties of our youth, these precious legacies from the days 
that are no more, whose light shines with a white lustre that 
belongs to them alone. 

Sleep well, my friend ! . . . 

I was not sorry to have seen the old town again, though it 
gave me but a sad pleasure at best, and I was glad when my 
short leave was up. And yet that singular thrill of walking 
where once you knew and were known of everybody, and 
where still, because of some slight rumors from the great 
outlying world, a flattering village curiosity attends you, is 
worth going a long journey to feel. 

To say nothing of your joyous enemy who hails you with 



SEEING THE OLD TOWN 



199 



stentorian shout and glad hand extended, on your arrival, and 
likewise dismisses you on your departure with curses not loud 
but deep. And the many things you see and hear and feel 
which, without compliment, certify you to yourself as you 
really are! 



first Low. 




In dreams she grows not older 
The lands of dream among, 

Though all the world wax colder, 
Though all the songs he sung; 

In dreams doth he behold her 
Still fair and kind and young. 

MAN never forgets his first love, however early 
in life it may have come to him; through all 
the ensuing years he bears this precious blue 
flower of the heart. Even amid the storms of 
later passion, or the tranquil joys of an assured 
love, it keeps its unseen, mysterious, marvelous life. How- 
ever the heart may burn, it still has dew enough for this un- 
fading blossom; however happy and content it may be in 
another love, yet has it a secret longing which only this can 
appease. Aye, though the heart itself be as a temple conse- 
crated to another woman, where Love as a priest offers per- 
petual sacrifice, yet shall you find, deep hidden within its 
shrine of shrines, a tiny white pyx holding the sacred Host, 
the imperishable dream of the first passion. 

Is it not astonishing how early we begin to love, — as if Na- 
ture had no other use for us? I can scarcely remember a 
time, however distant in my childhood, when I was not in 
love with somebody. Ah, do not think those earliest troubles 
of the heart are to be smiled at as children's play. Innocent 



THE FIRST LOVE 201 

though they were, what exquisite sweet pain they caused us I 
What cruel unhappiness, since to be young and unhappy 
seems a special malignancy of fate ! What ineffable long- 
ings, that our childish minds vainly sought to understand! 
What torments of jealousy, which the storms of mature pas- 
sion have been impotent to efface! 

Mamie ! The name will never lose its magic for me and 
to the end it will continue to be whispered from my dreams. 
And to think I have now a daughter older than she was when 
I first saw and loved her. O time the inexorable ! . . . 

She was twelve and I was sixteen when we tasted together 
the poignant sweets of young passion, the delicious fruit of 
that one forbidden tree in the earthly Eden which to eat and 
enjoy, humanity will ever gladly face exile and death. 

Yet Mamie was only a little girl just entering her teens, 
though developed like a child madonna and, as I was to 
know, with feelings beyond her years. I have never seen 
anything like the proud beauty of her face with its glorious 
hazel eyes, rich brown and red cheek like a ripe fruit, and 
scarlet sensitive mouth, all framed in a setting of dark au- 
burn hair. 

I pause to smile a little at this fervid description, but you 
will understand that I am trying to look into the Boy's heart 
and to write what I find there. That this Fairy Princess 
of love was only a little household drudge kept from school 
and slaving all day for her large German mother married 
the second time to a small German tailor who had a younger 
daughter of his own by this said mother for whom he evinced 
an unpleasing preference, — these things may hold well 



202 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

enough together in a world of hard facts, but the Boy saw 
them through the lens of his romantic imagination. And so 
complete was the illusion that after more than twenty-five 
years the Man cannot easily shake it off. 

The very beginning of it I can't remember — perhaps we 
never do recall those first obscure intimations of a passion. I 
have a delicious but confused memory of long evening walks 
with her and the little sister — she, as I recollect with an old 
pang, was nearly always with us. It was summer and the 
place was an old New England town with a narrow river 
spanned by quaint bridges flowing through the midst of it. 
I have known love since, — ah me! — and real passion, the 
kind that consumes a man's life as flame licks up oil; but never 
again have I known anything to compare with that young 
dream. 

Crossing one of these bridges on a certain evening sacred 
to the angels of Memory and Joy, the little sister stopped be- 
hind not more than a minute to tie her shoe; and we had 
our first kiss ! (The Man trembles at the remembrance) . I 
did not ask for it — I feared her, that is, loved her too much; 
and she knew no* more of coquetry than a babe. So far as I 
can be sure, the impulse was at once mutual, natural and ir- 
resistible. O clinging dewy mouth ! O young heart flutter- 
ing wildly against mine ! — when have I ever drunk at so pure 
a fount of joy! . . . 

After that our evening walks were mostly made up of 
kisses, for the little sister (she was nine) had to be let into 
the secret, and as I recall with some surprise, she never be- 
trayed us. This was the more to her credit, seeing that she 
was only a half-sister and the favorite child. But not even a 



THE FIRST LOVE 203 

little girl of nine can bear to see another getting all the kisses, 
and so she would be vexed sometimes and cry pettishly, "Oh 
kiss, kiss! — why don't you get married?" Then I would 
appease her with candy or a promise of something nice, — 
and we would enjoy our subsequent kisses all the more for the 
little interruption. O far years, wafting to me a faint scent 
of lilac ! O youth that is no more ! . . . 

This lasted a whole summer, — the only entire season, the 
Man freely admits, that he ever passed in Paradise. Could he 
now go back through the crowding years, I am very sure that 
he would make a bee-line for that old New England town 
and with a heart thumping in his throat, look for a beloved 
little figure on one of the quaint bridges in the summer gloam- 
ing. 

Here the Boy tugs at my sleeve and asks me not to tell the 
prosaic occasion of those twilight walks with Mamie and lit- 
tle sister ; the same being that the little tailor sent them every 
night but Sunday (ah, those heart-hungry Sunday nights!) 
for a pint of beer and often chided them for bringing it home 
flat. He, the Boy, is quite sullen when I try to make him 
understand that this homely detail but adds to the pathos of 
his romance. Stubborn Boy indeed . . . and the Man 
not so much better ! 

I had to leave the little town at the end of that summer of 
love and so suddenly that there was no chance to bid her 
good-bye. Once again, and only once, I saw her afterward 
when about two years later I visited the place. On our dear 
bridge, too, and with little sister grown formidably larger 
and more knowing. She came defiantly between us at once 
and I saw with a sinking heart that we dared not renew the 



20 4 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

old love-making. Mamie was taller, paler and, as I thought, 
— I mean the Boy, — lovely as an angel. I scarcely remem- 
ber a word that she said to me — the constraint of the sister's 
presence checked us both. I think she was chilled too by the 
fact that my visit was to be only for a few days; and she 
doubtless realized the truth, that I was passing out of her 
life. Never have I been more wretched than during that last 
walk with Mamie. 

On leaving her I mustered up my courage and ignoring 
little sister, whose eyes were bright with malice, offered to 
kiss her. She turned her cheek toward me, saying calmly: "1 
am going to be confirmed on Sunday." 

That cold kiss is my last memory of Mamie, of the warm 
loving child-woman whose mere name, seen or heard, causes 
my heart to thrill as when a boy. I never saw her again. . . . 

Where is she now ? God knows : yet in no worse place, I 
trust, than that consoling heaven of our dreams where the 
precious things of the heart that we have lost in our journey 
through life are restored to us ; and most dear and precious of 
all, our first love. 




Cbe 6reat Redemption, 




ET us believe in George Meredith's "God of 
hearty humor." He would, I am sure, be very 
different from the Jewish God, that terrible 
Being who was never known to smile, and in 
whose awful shadow the children of men have 
mourned and done penance during weary ages. We should 
turn away from that lurid history in which there is no inno- 
cent mirth, whose triumphs are often stained with the blood 
of the guiltless and from whose pages men have wrested a 
warrant for their blackest crimes. We should forget it ut- 
terly — its blighting and cursing, its groveling worship, its 
denial of humanity in the name of a self-styled God of 
Mercy, its craven prostration before the jealous Egotist of 
the heavens. 

Our God of hearty humor is one who would not lie in 
wait, nursing His malice against us poor human mites, spy- 
ing upon us constantly, and rejoicing in His enormous power 
of mischief. Who would not punish the children for the sins 
of the fathers. Who would not play favorites and set one 
race to destroy another. Who would not have an insatiable 
appetite for foolish incense and mumbled praise. Who would 
not be a mean God for mean people, preferring those made 
in His own image and likeness. Who would hate to see the 
spiritual distortions that are now practised before the Other, 
in the name of religion. Who would have nothing to do* with 
an Atonement of cruelty and blood. Who would be a kind 



206 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

human God for human beings and not a mythical monster 
belonging to a remote age of nightmare and darkness. Who 
would get tired sometimes of His majesty up there and come 
down and visit with us. Having His laugh with us — ah,then 
to be witty would no longer be sinful and sanctified dulness 
would lose its crown. Shouldn't we enjoy the humor of God, 
especially the immense joke that we quite mistook His char- 
acter during ages and ages? — stupendous hoax! Hearing 
our complaints with kind indulgence and disproving that old 
libel that one may not see God and live. Being, in short, a 
hearty God whom a plain man could talk to without the help 
of bell, book or candle, and who would care for us, His little 
ones, as tenderly as we care for our own. What a re-writing 
there would be of the legend of God ! What a discrediting of 
the old fables! What a tearing down of the old hideous 
idols before which the world has prostrated itself for a thou- 
sand and a thousand years ! — for there should be no lifeless 
images of the Living God. What an abandonment of the 
churches ! — for this God would meet us naturally anywhere, 
at home or abroad in the fields. What a wiping out of the 
creeds ! — knowing Him face to face, we should not have to 
set down our belief in a book, lest we forget it over night. 
What a wholesale dismissal of His self-appointed agents and 
intermediaries ! — no one should stand between this God and 
the humblest of his children. What a new heaven, what a new 
earth in the sure presence of a kind, hearty God, who would 
manifest Himself equally to all His people! . . . 

Perhaps it is not so hard to believe that such a God is with 
us even now . . . if we will only stop thinking of the 
Other! . . . 



THE GREAT REDEMPTION 207 

I myself was born in fear, but that was not the beginning, 
for in fear my mother had conceived me, and during the 
period before my birth, often I felt her heart tremble with 
fear. But even that was not the beginning — oh, far from it. 
I feel within me the fear of remote generations, dim, shad- 
owy, formless, vague ; yet having the power to i dominate and 
oppress me. Fearful inheritance, to have to struggle with 
terrors bequeathed by the dead ! In dreams especially they 
assert their terrible sway over me, filling my brain with a 
phantasmagoria of horror, robbing my nights of peaceful 
rest so that often the morning finds me weak, shattered, un- 
refreshed, and burdened with a nameless fear. 

My parents worshipped the One True God, the God of 
Fear, and as a child I was always taken to- church in order 
that my mind might receive indelible impressions of the faith 
which held them in terror. There was beauty in the church, 
in the many-hued windows with majestic aureoled figures, in 
the sacred statues with gold and jeweled crowns, in the mar- 
ble altar with its hovering cloud of angels, and especially in 
the slow illumination thereof, candle by candle, until it be- 
came a solid blaze of light. I loved to see the young acolytes 
in their gowns, some of them as lovely as the marble sera- 
phim; to watch the silent, marshaled order with which they 
attended an awe-inspiring figure clothed in gorgeous vest- 
ments; to hear at intervals their shrill, sweet young voices, 
rising above the deep note of the organ and responding to the 
priest in words which I understood not, but which I thought 
must be the language of Heaven; to smell the strange sweet 
odor of incense and to see the communicants in white dresses 
leave the altar with bowed heads and clasped hands, looking 



208 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

like a company of the Shining Ones : — all this could not but 
mark a child's mind and soul with an abiding remembrance. 

Alas, for me it was spoiled by the terrible sermons which 
the priest so often preached in those days, on Hell and the 
punishment of the Damned. There was one priest with a 
strong, rolling voice and an appearance of awful sincerity, 
who commonly chose this theme and whose words I shall 
never forget. How convincingly he simulated the anger of 
his terrible God ! How movingly he depicted the pains and 
tortures of the Infernal Place! "Think, dear children," he 
would cry to us, "think but a moment on the pains of Hell. 
Mind cannot conceive it ; tongue cannot utter it. If you touch 
the tip of your finger to a red-hot coal for but an instant, less 
than a second, what pain you suffer! Less than a second, 
mark you ! Then think of this agony multiplied a thousand 
thousand times, and continued through all eternity, forever 
and ever! The pain never to be assuaged, and the punish- 
ment never to cease!" . . . 

It seemed to me, as I heard him, that Hell opened before 
my eyes, and I saw the very horrors he portrayed. 

This priest was an honest man ; he believed to the full ex- 
tent what he told us; he was simply fulfilling a duty to his 
God of Fear. The cost of raising such awful images before 
childish minds, and filling childish hearts with such enduring 
terrors, was perhaps never considered by him; was no part 
of his priestly business. I should be glad to argue the point 
with him, could I now see him anywhere, save in my 
dreams. 

But fear is not confined to what we call Religion or to the 
worship of a terrible Something in the sky: in one shape or 



THE GREAT REDEMPTION 



209 



another, it dogs life at every turn. No man, if he would con- 
fess the truth, ever lived a whole hour without fear. In order 
to maintain fear in the world, the human race has entered in- 
to a universal conspiracy which is ironically dubbed, " Civili- 
zation. " 

Government, taking pattern from Religion, is a thing of 
fear, with a soldier at the base and a king at the top ! Fear 
props every throne, writes every statute, and gives to every 
mummified injustice, the sanction of Law. 

The world awaits its true Savior — him who shall deliver 
it from fear. In our time, we shall not see him, but he is 
coming, oh yes, coming, sure as hope has lived along with 
fear during a myriad years. 

Mankind has once been redeemed we are taught, but 
alas ! the fruits of that redemption are not for this world. 
Here the shadow and the oppression of fear have lifted but 
a very little for some races, and for others, not at all. What 
a glorious hope, to bequeath to our children a world without 
fear! 

It is, alas! only too true that mankind, in their present 
estate, cannot even imagine A universe without terror, 
and, strange to say, they would be utterly afraid to think of 
it. But that will become easy for them on the day they cast 
away their worship of the old GOD OF FEAR ! 



Cbe Better Day. 




N THE beginning we are told the good God or- 
dained that some of His human children should 
play and more of them should labor. So it has 
continued to this day, to the entire satisfaction 
of the playing children. 
These latter were never so numerous in the world as they 
are in the present year of grace. They were never so rich 
and they never had so many beautiful and ingenious play- 
things — the world is literally a doll's house to them. It is for 
them to sing: 

The world is so full of all manner of things, 
I think we should all be as happy as kings. 

I say they were never so numerous, because the labor of 
the children who toil is ever creating new wealth, the ma- 
terial of pleasure, and this increases the number of the chil- 
dren who play. Mark you, without really diminishing the 
great host of working children. 

Of course, these are often discontented with their lot, and 
sometimes they even threaten to knock off work entirely and 
go in for play themselves. But it never quite comes to this, 
for law and authority, the forces of organized society, are 
always on the side of the playing children. And when the 
laboring children actually leave the work-bench, the forge, 
the mine, the factory, proposing foolishly to themselves to 



THE BETTER DAY 211 

imitate their betters, then the thing is called a Strike, the sol- 
diers are brought out to terrify the unwilling workers, often 
many of these are killed in the violence that is sure to follow, 
and presently all is again as before : the laboring children la- 
bor and the playing children play. If a strike were to last 
very long, — that is, long enough to inconvenience the playing 
children, then it would be called Anarchy and there would 
surely be War. But that dreadful thing has seldom hap- 
pened, and so the playing children have small fear of it. 

It is very hard to break down an ordinance of the good 
God. And yet this one regulating the division of labor and 
play, has stood so long, not perhaps so much through the will 
of the playing children and those in authority, as through 
the patient submission of the working children themselves, 
who for the most part love and believe in God, and especially 
believe that the Son of God while upon this earth was like 
unto themselves. So they have been patient, very patient, 
and I think will be so to the very end — the end that shall 
give them at last their due portion of play. 

Yes, there were. never so many playing children and never 
so much play in the world. And it really is a beautiful world 
to play in, if one only had the time for it, and the money! 
But money and time, the two chief requisites of play, can 
not be for any man, except through the labor of others. 
Herein is seen the wisdom of the good God — without the 
children who labor there would be no children who play ! 

To be sure, there are certain men called Anarchists and 
Socialists by those in authority, who propose that all shall 
labor and all shall play, on equal terms. In other words, that 
there shall be no longer a distinct division of the children 

15 



212 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

who labor and the children who play. But this plan is re- 
garded by the churches as an impiety — there is no warrant 
for it in the Bible, they say, and it clearly was not the in- 
tention of the good God. Has He not always played favor- 
ities, according to the Book which is called His Word; set- 
ting some of His children to rob and slaughter others, equal- 
ly His children ; wiping out the guiltless and taking their in- 
heritance; filling whole regions of the earth with needless 
suffering, and blood, and tears? It is true the meaning of the 
Holy Book seems often obscure in the light of common 
sense and has to be interpreted by an Authority which prac- 
tically stopped guessing about it over a thousand years ago ! 
In the past the efforts of men to understand the Bible dif- 
ferently from the teachings of Authority, often led to bloody 
wars. But if you will hearken to the churches, there has 
never been a heresy so dangerous to Sacred Truth or one 
that carried so formidable a menace to the divinely appoint- 
ed system of things, as this of the men called Socialists and 
Anarchists — namely, that the human race, all children of 
God, should not be divided into two groups, enormously 
unequal, of those that labor and those that play. Many of 
the playing children are at bitter odds as to the meaning of 
the Bible in various texts and places — nay, to a considerable 
number of them the Holy Book seems a very dull joke and 
their lives are often a mockery of its precepts. But on the 
point that they and their kind shall be suffered to play for- 
ever, they are all in perfect accord and as one mind. The 
forces of law and authority are on the same side and also 
the weight of that immense legacy of traditional ignorance, 



THE BETTER DAY 213 

superstition, brutality and injustice which is misnamed civil- 
ization. 

So it is bound to take a long time, a very long time yet; but 
I believe the Plan will be tried one day. And if it shall suc- 
ceed (which I believe also) then the good God will be wor- 
shipped in this beautiful world of His as He never was 
through the cruel ages when He turned one face to the chil- 
dren of labor and another to the children of play. . . . 

For sometimes I see as in a vision a fairer and better 
world than this in which man is still the prey of man and the 
race still travails under the primal curse. A fairer and better 
world and yet the same. 

The same green plains and rolling rivers, the same ban- 
nered forests and flower-decked meadows, the same happy 
orchards and smiling fields, the same succession of seed-time 
and harvest, the same processional of the seasons, with the 
blue sky over all. 

But not the same faces and forms of men and women 
and children — not the same their life in the thronged cities 
where labor, wolf-like, feeds on labor, poverty devours pov- 
erty, and the many toil hopelessly for the few — not the same 
in the meagre villages where the strong man pines in his 
unfruitful strength and old age is a mendicant, nor in the 
wide country, rich with corn and wheat, whose wealth is not 
for the tillers : — not the same wherever human destiny is cast. 

I look, and lo ! I see beautiful and ordered cities occupying 
larger spaces, with homes of comfort and beauty for all the 
dwellers therein. I mark no divisions of rich and poor, of 
proud and humble, of vicious and virtuous, of law-abiding 
and disorderly. I see no gallows for the felon, no jail for the 



2i 4 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

criminal, no court for crime, no brothel for the prostitute, 
no workhouse for poverty, no hospital for disease — none of 
all the nameless refuges into which society casts the rejected, 
the fallen and the despised. 

Instead of these terrible and familiar things, I see health 
universal as the air, virtue that needs no policeman, honesty 
that goes unwatched and unsuspect, content and competency 
for all. I see many and noble schools, some in spacious build- 
ings, others in the open parks and pleasure places, the teach- 
ers mingling freely with the eager, happy children; and I 
note with joy that there is an end of the old instruction of 
constraint and fear. 

I see with greater joy and thankfulness that among all 
these children of the Better Day there is no defect of mind, 
no deformity of body; that they were conceived and begot- 
ten in the love that can not libel itself. And I rejoice that 
there should be an end of that old blasphemy declaring the 
idiot, the halt and the blind, the wen, the hare-lip and the 
ulcer to have been made in the image of God. 

I see churches of a more liberal and humane religion, 
temples of a higher art, theatres of a nobler drama, orpheons 
of a grander music, recreations of a better and more elevat- 
ing kind, open to all the people. I am stricken with wonder 
at the demeanor of these worthy citizens, at their sage and 
just observations, their unerring sense of artistic beauty and 
fitness, the culture and largeness of view, common to all, 
which accompany their better lot. 

I see on every hand unhurried, skillful industry that seems 
to me superior to much of the so-called art of our own day. 
I mark the fine proportions of the private dwellings, the 



THE BETTER DAY 215 

heroic symmetry of the public structures, the true harmony 
in which all are coordinated. I see carpenters and house- 
smiths working with the dignity of sculptors, mechanics 
proud of their artizanry, a new honor in all the trades. I see 
labor unforced, erect, independent everywhere. I hear no 
brutal commands, I see no servile or sullen obedience. I pre- 
ceive only the will of free men in voluntary action, delighting 
to serve and adorn the city of their homes. And in all these 
grand cities I see no pampered idleness, no useless hands, no 
listless slaves of luxury, no swollen drones absorbing the 
riches of the hive, no parasites whose ease is purchased by 
the blood and sweat of thousands. But I see that there is la- 
bor and leisure enough for all. 

Now looking to the country, I see as it were a vast and 
variegated garden made up of multitudes of smiling farms, 
with every acre yielding its due produce, every rood under 
tillage, and labor here as in the cities, content, calm and 
self-sustaining. I see that at last the city and the country 
live for, not to prey upon or devour, each other. I look 
upon such a population as the world has never seen, filling 
the earth with joy and mirth, with love and useful labor, 
with the blessings of peace, the trophies of art, the achieve- 
ments of industry. I see no idle, menacing armies, no hosts 
of men withdrawn from the pursuits of peace, no cannoneers 
waiting with match and fuse, no quarrel broached on sea or 
land, no priests arrayed to bless and sanction slaughter, no 
sword unsheathed, no whip upraised, no cowering tortured 
form, no people bowed beneath oppression, no despot defiant 
of justice — nothing to mar the universal brotherhood under 
the smile of God! . . . 



2l6 



PALMS OF PAPYRUS 



Oh, call it not a foolish vision, crudely as I have here 
sought to put it into words,- — for it has been the consoling 
dream of the noblest souls that have ever worn the vesture 
of humanity. It was this which inspired the martyrs of free- 
dom, and filled with light the dungeons of the brave; this 
which robbed the rack of pain, took away the sting of the 
most cruel death, and welcomed the stern trial of the fire. Be 
it ours to pray for it, to watch for it, to struggle for it with 
patient loyalty, to bring up our children in the holy faith of 
it, to consecrate and dedicate to it the best purpose of our 
lives. 

So shall those who come after bless us in the light of that 
Better Day, paying to our dust the homage of their praise 
and tears; lamenting that we can not share in the glorious 
fruition. So shall we be sure that we have not lived in vain ! 







familiar philosophy- 



Rope* 



mmmm 



AST ever been in Hell, dear child of God? Hast 
fallen down — down — down to those rayless 
depths where thou couldst no longer feel the 
supporting hand of God and where thou didst 
seem to taste the agony of the last abandon- 
ment? Hast known that terrible remorse wherein the soul 
executes judgment on herself — true image it may be of the 
Last Judgment — that night of the spirit whence hope and 
blessedness seem to have utterly departed? Hast known all 
this, dear child of God, not once but many times? — nay, 
livest thou in a constant dread expectation of knowing this 
again and again, so long as thy soul liveth? Then, be of 
good hope, for thou art indeed a Child of God ! 

There be many ways of winning Heaven, dear heart, but 
this is of the surest — to know and feel Hell in this world. 
And the more terribly thou comest to realize in thy spirit 
the horror and desolation of Hell here, the better approved 
is thy heirship in the Kingdom. For when thy feet take 
hold on Hell, then of a truth thy hope is high as Heaven. 

This too>, forget not, is the trial and test of all fine souls 
— saints of God, martyrs of humanity, the great mystics 
and dreamers, the chosen of our race, whose names partake 
of the eternal life and glory of the stars. Wouldst thou 
be of a better company ? All these great and victorious souls 



218 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

had known Hell to its uttermost depths, had tasted its most 
bitter anguish, had suffered its most fearful agonies, had 
drunk the cup of its awful despair, and had cried out under 
the burthen of doom, like Him on the Cross, that their God 
had forsaken them. Yet all were sons of God and proved 
their titles by conquering Hell in this world. 

Even as they fought the good fight and prevailed, so shalt 
thou, brave heart. Be glad and rejoice that thou art called 
upon to endure the same great trial, as being worthy of their 
fellowship. Thy deep-dwelling sorrows, thine agonies of 
spirit, — nay, thy wrestling with Powers of Darkness and all 
the supra-mortal venture of thy soul which thou deemest 
laid upon thee as a curse, — do but seal and stamp thee God's 
darling. For none can reach the heights who has not known 
the depths, and though the Kingdom of Heaven be not of 
this world, most surely is the Kingdom of Hell. 

Courage, dear child of God! 



Sympathy. 




|YMPATHY! Sympathy! More and more I tell 
myself, this is the master word. 

We are constantly seeking our own in dark- 
Mi ness and light, awake or adream; reaching out 
our longing arms toward the Infinite; sending 
forth our filaments of thought; summoning the One who 
shall know and feel, with a passion of desire; praying for 
that rare response which crowns the chief expectancy of life. 
Not always do our arms fall empty; not always do our 



FAMILIAR PHILOSOPHY 219 

thoughts return to mock our vain quest; not always are our 
prayers unanswered and our hearts left void and cold. 

I hold this to be of the true divinity of life, this kinship of 
the spirit which will leave no man or woman at rest but ever 
insists upon working out its exigent yet benign destiny, form- 
ing those sweet and consoling relations which are our best 
joy here and may be our eternal satisfaction. 

For the expectancy of love and sympathy, — that is to say, 
understanding — is one that never dies in the human heart. I 
may be sad, or dull, or cold, or out of touch with reality ; I 
may persuade myself that there is no longer any pith in my 
mystery, that the years have left me bankrupt in the essen- 
tial stuff of life; that there is no remaining use for me under 
the sun. But let my heart be apprised, in the faintest whis- 
per, of the advent or imminence of a new friend, and la! the 
world is fresh-made, the heavens constellated with hope and 
joy and wonder as on the first day. 

Life is truly measured only by such love or expectancy; 
when that fails it is the same story for king and beggar. 

Love is the summoner, love is the seeker, love the expec- 
tancy and love the fulfillment. Blessed be Love ! 

I have said that we can not lose our own and are always 
seeking them by various means. Let me cite a familiar in- 
stance, which many readers will easily parallel from their 
own experience. But it is the familiar instance that really 
proves. 

A year or so ago I was deeply moved by the wretched fate 
of a man of genius whom I had loved for his mind and ad- 
mired for his art and pitied for his terrible misfortunes. I 
said my say on the matter, with sincerity at least, and these 



220 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

words of mine brought me precious letters of praise and sym- 
pathy from unknown friends in foreign lands, who had also 
been friends of the fallen man of genius. Then, some time 
afterward, I read in an American journal a letter on the same 
subject by a man whose name was unknown to me, but whose 
quickened expression of my own feelings — pity for the dead, 
thanks for his rare gifts of which art has the immortal usu- 
fruct, charity for his errors and scorn for the Pharisaic spirit 
that exulted in an orgy of reprobation over the obscure 
grave where he had at last found peace and a safe refuge 
from the hunters — called the tears to my eyes and the blood 
to my heart. I tried to learn the writer's address in order to 
thank him for the emotion he had given me, but failed for 
reasons which I need not explain. Months passed away, 
during which I thought of the writer often, with a certain 
motiveless feeling, too, that I could afford to wait ; and then 
one day there fluttered into my hand a letter from him ! Just 
such a letter as I should have expected from one whose mind 
and heart were an open book to me ; artless and cordial, as a 
man should write to his friend. He, too, had been seeking 
me, having somehow learned of the strong tie of sympathy 
between us; and the thing had harassed him, as he frankly 
confessed, until he found me. 

Oh, I do not claim that there is anything extraordinary in 
this little coincidence, for I am not a believer in the extra- 
ordinary — the ordinary keeping my curiosity and sense of 
wonder fully occupied. But surely it establishes something 
for the kinship of sympathy and the intuitive mutual quest of 
related spirits. 

My prayer to the Infinite is that I may be suffered to go on 



FAMILIAR PHILOSOPHY 221 

to the end, seeking . . . seeking. For I say again, 
Love is the summoner, Love is the seeker, Love the expec- 
tancy and Love the fulfilment. Blessed be Love ! 



Ideal. 




ES, dear, do you go on sending me those sweet 
messages full of praise, and hope, and inspira- 
tion, holding always before me the Ideal, keep- 
me to the plane of my better self. I may not 
feel that I deserve a tenth part of your faith in 
me — no matter, some day I may be worthy of your praise. 
And even though I should never reach the summit of your ap- 
preciation, still the glory will be yours of having urged me to 
the endeavor. You are the height and I am the depth; you 
are the star shining in the Infinite and I the poor vainly as- 
piring worm on the earth below : yet in some fortunate hour 
I may be lifted to you. 

For we do not make the supreme effort of our souls for 
the many, but for the few, — nay, oftenest of all, for the 
One ! When I am at my best, you know well that I am writ- 
ing for you alone; when I am at my worst, it is because I 
can not rise to the thought of you. Even so my soul is often 
silent for days, giving me no message from the Infinite, no 
hint of its kinship to the stars, no whisper of the life it led 
before this life and the life it shall lead after this. I some- 
times think you are my soul ! 

But help me — help me always, no matter how often and 



222 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

how far I may fall below your hope of me. Still reach me 
your kind hand which has power to save me from the last 
gulf; still say those words of grace and cheer for which I 
hunger the more, the more that I feel my unworthiness. I 
will read them over and over until I make myself believe 
that I really deserve them. Some day, be sure, I will utterly 
free myself from my baser self and live only for you. I will 
be your Sir Galahad and my strength of soul shall be as the 
strength of ten. I will dedicate every thought to you and I 
will write for you alone — then must I at last be worthy of 
your praise in which the few or the many will have no part. 
I will no longer give out my truth to hire, or shame the Di- 
vinity in my breast, or care only to move the laughter of the 
crowd. I will write a book only for you, and you shall be 
here, as now, looking over my shoulder as I write, and giving 
me fresh inspiration whenever my thought fails. Neither 
the few nor the many shall see this book — it will be for you 
and me alone. We shall love it greatly for having written it 
together and because it will be forever sacred to us two. I 
have already thought of a title for this book — we shall call 
it the "Story of a Man who Lost but afterward Found his 
Soul.' , 

Turn now your dear face to the light — for my lamp wanes 
and I have sat far into the night — that I may see the look 
of praise upon it that has cheered so many a task of mine; 
that I may renew my worn spirit in the eternal peace of those 
calm eyes. 

Tell me, — oh, tell me the truth, I beseech you, — are you 
my soul! 



Little JMotber. 




SjN almost every large family there is one devoted 
girl who stands ready to take the mother's place 
and to whom the younger ones turn with a sure 
trust and affection. Of all the household virtues 
— the sacred, incommunicable things of hearth 
and home — I know of nothing quite so beautiful as this. 

All deep and genuine love is of the essence of sacrifice. 
Who has not suffered the martydom of the heart has never 
known love. But how touching is this abnegation, this hero- 
ism that springs from we know not what depths of human 
nature, when seen in one whose eyes still look at you with 
the candid innocence of childhood ! Oh, men and women, 
tell me not that Heaven itself can show a lovelier thing. . . . 
And musing on it, there rises before me a little face and 
figure, most dear from all the woven ties of race and blood 
and memory; — a little face that you might deem plain 
enough, but which is beautiful to me with its quiet brow and 
steady, thoughtful eyes still misted with the hopes and dreams 
of youth. She puts a small hand in mine and leads me back 
over the years — years of which, God knows, I took but little 
heed in their passage. And I see her always the same yet 
always younger, hushing to sleep other little faces strangely 
like hers, mothering one tot after another, lavishing upon 
them the artless love and praise she should have given her 
dolls — alas, these were the only dolls she ever really knew; 
coaxing them over the first pitfalls of infancy, caring for 



224 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

them with a pitiably premature wisdom — aye, and sometimes 
bravely battling for them with the urchins of the street, for- 
getting her tears until the peril was past. 

I see resting his pale cheek on her young breast — a child 
nursing a child ! — one that too soon grew weary and left us. 
But her arms are empty only a moment, for even as I look, 
another babe is there. And I wonder, with a painful sense 
of ingratitude, that I should never have reckoned this treas- 
ure at its worth; that I should have been blind to so much 
that was beyond price in the humble little world about me; 
that there was a heavy debt against me on behalf of this 
child which I could never repay. 

Something of this I try to say to her in stumbling words, 
nor caring to keep back the tears. But she hushes me with a 
touch on the cheek and an intensity of the quiet look habitual 
with her. And now she leads me back through the long 
nursery of years; past little beds where rosy health slum- 
bered, clasping its toys, or pale sickness lay feverishly awake ; 
past all the scenes wherein her brave young heart was 
schooled and she became a woman whilst yet a child; past 
the lightly regretted dolls and her childish air-castles always 
tumbled topsy-turvy by those tiny baby hands — back into the 
present where, almost a young woman now, she smiles joy- 
ously at me, holding up the youngest in her arms ! 

Oh little mother, blessed be you and all your sisters the 
wide earth over that worthily bear the name. Your tears 
are reckoned in Heaven, where the Innocents sing ever your 
praise; and when you die, having known only the maternity 
of the heart, God calls you unto Him, very near the Throne ! 




Love* 

j O VE is for the loving. 

There is but one well in the world that grows 
ever the richer and sweeter and more plenteous 
by giving. 

That well is the human heart and its living 
waters are those of love. 

Yet herein is the wonder of it, that the man who thinks 
he hath need of it but seldom shall not at his desire get more 
than a scanty draught, and the sweet water shall turn bitter in 
his mouth. 

Ye have heard it said, to him that hath shall be given : this 
is the meaning thereof. 

Spend yourself in loving that you may be often athirst 
for the life-giving water. But count not to drink unto re- 
freshing unless you come weary and blessed from the service 
of love. Then, ah then, the sweetness of the draught ! . . . 
Love is for the loving. 



I spake some harsh words to my dear love, thinking my- 
self in the right and forgetting the Law' of Kindness. Then, 
as I was turning away in anger, the sight of her pale face, 
with its mute reproach, smote me to the heart. I took her 
in my arms and we wept the most precious tears together. 
O divine moment, in that sacred hush, with her heart beat- 
ing against mine, I seemed to be conscious of angels listening. 



226 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Love is akin to hate — how trite that is and how true! I 
sometimes wonder is either quality to be found unmixed with 
the other? Can we have love without hate or hate without 
love ? The only glimpse of hatred I have ever had that quite 
appalled me was from one who loved me very much. Ah, 
happy they who neither love nor hate ! 



In love we must bleed and the wounds we receive are very 
cruel. Still it seems we can never have enough of them, for 
love has power to heal the wounds which it inflicts — and so 
we go on loving and bleeding to the end. 



There is one thing of which I have never had my fill and 
for which my soul hungers always — love ! And always I am 
promising myself that some day I shall be satisfied. 



When I was younger there was nothing for me but a wo- 
man between the heavens and the earth. Now I perceive 
there are a few other things. Yet I am not old, as age is 
counted. 



The only man who has a right to despair of the world is 
he who neither loves nor is loved. 



There is but one thing more interesting than a woman's 
love — her hate. 



Love is a combat and friendship a duel. Strife is the law 
of existence. 



LOVE 



227 



I should never be weary learning of women. I have long 
since tired learning of men. 



Look back now over the long way and see if it be not 
Love that has led you so far ! 



Love is the one dream that does not forsake us as we de- 
scend into the Valley, but is potent to bring joy or misery 
to the last. 



Woman is the weaker animal, but she wins every battle 
with man — even when he thinks himself the victor. 



To find the One who could love and feel and understand 
— this is the dream of some who yet remain faithful to their 
bonds. 



What is more terrible than the face of one who once loved 
and now hates you, seen in a dream ! 




v> 



epigrams and Hphorisma 




HE wise gods when they contrived this tragic 
comedy of life which we have been such a weary 
time a-playing, mixed up a little humor with the 
serious business. He alone plays his part well 
who finds the jest — the lath for the sword, the 
mask of Harlequin for the frozen face of Medusa. Those 
who have best solved the exquisite humor of the gods are 
called great by the general voice of mankind, and some dozen 
of them have lived since the world, or the play, began. Unlike 
those supremely gifted players, the vast majority of men get 
only the merest inkling of the gods' merry intent, but it suf- 
fices to save their lives from utter misery. Some devote them- 
selves to solving the riddle with terrible seriousness, and the 
laughing god underneath always escapes them, leaving them 
empty-handed and ever the more tragically serious. These — 
and they are no small number — die in madhouses or religion, 
or write books which increase the sorrow of the world : what- 
ever their fate, life remains for them a tragedy to the end. 



There came a Soul before the Judgment seat. And God 
said: Need there is none that We judge this man, for he 
hath given all his days to Evil; from his childhood he hath 
turned his back upon the City of Peace and none hath ever 
cleaved more to the sweetness of sin. Let him pronounce his 
own judgment and avow that he hath deserved the Evil 
Place. 



EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 229 

Then the Soul cried out : It is true I have merited Hell by 
my iniquity, but this is not thy justice. 

And God said: What more canst thou ask, seeing that 
thou hast wrought judgment against thyself? 

Then the Soul made answer : Send me to Heaven for the 
good I would have done! 



Laugh at Death and the chances are that he will give you 
a meaning salute and pass by. Get into a panic and chase 
after Dr. Cure-all — you will presently have a surer physician 
on your trail. When the Fear is really at hand, — as once 
occurred to me, when though I called to it, it went away, — 
you will learn that it is no fear at all. For it is much easier 
to die than to live, and at the last Nature helps us to play our 
part. Indeed I believe few of us know what true courage 
is until we come to die, though we talk of it so loosely. 

The fear of death is largely a growth of superstition, and 
it has especially been fostered by the Christian faith, with its 
terribly uncertain award in the Hereafter. To the ancients 
it was utterly unknown in this dreadful aspect, and it was 
indeed accepted with a natural firmness and resignation which 
"makes cowards of us all." But the last thing to be said is, 
that our modern fear of death is as foolish as futile and 
makes a mock of itself. For why cling so desperately to this 
uneasy life which you are yet ever wishing an end of, by dis- 
content with the present or idle anticipation of the future? 
Do you remember when it was thrust upon you? — I doubt 
that you will be more conscious when it is at last taken away. 



Some one has defined genius as "inspired common sense." 



2 3 o PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

I would beg to amend this by dropping "common," for a 
genius may have inspired sense at any age, but common 
sense does not come to him much before he is thirty- 
five. For about the seventh lustrum a man begins 
to see the true value of life and to hold a serious ac- 
counting with himself. The spendthrift desires and ardors of 
passion are past — the riot and the rapture of mere physical 
enjoyment gone by. Henceforth a man is no longer the fool 
of his senses — unless he be a fool from his mother's womb. 

The universe has steadied itself in his gaze; men cease to 
appear unto him as "trees walking;" the eternal questions, 
Wherefore? Whither? recur with a persistence that will 
not be laid to sleep. 

Now does the man begin to set his affairs in order and to 
take stock of his life-experience. What have the years 
brought him or taken away? — the gravity of this thought 
strikes him with a novel force. He finds, in truth, that he is 
poorer than he believed; that the mountains which once 
seemed to melt before the daring of his spirit are still there 
and now, alas ! impassably high ; that he is less in knowledge 
and will and power than he had assured himself; that time 
has stripped him of not a few illusions which once seemed to 
him the very stuff of life. 



While the fit lasts I take my opinions very seriously and 
labor hard to pass them on to others; not, if I know myself, 
as a matter of vanity, but simply that other persons may be 
benefited by partaking of the immense wisdom and knowl- 
edge which I do not care to monopolize. I am even eager to 
do battle for my opinions, and make myself quite wretched 



EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 231 

should they fail of a candid hearing. And it is likely enough 
that in my fiery, foolish zeal I may unwittingly cause pain to 
some tender hearts — for which I now and at all times ask 
forgiveness. But presently the wind shifts round to another 
corner of the compass, and I am a sane, good-humored man 
again, laughing cheerfully at my own and others' opinions. 

Most of us inherit our opinions. I inherited mine, and they 
were of the sort that are branded into the soul by old, un- 
happy, far-off memories of persecution endured for their 
sake; committed as a sacred heritage of race and blood; con- 
firmed by voices that plead the more potently across the 
silence of death ; and finally stamped by a course of training 
that picked them out in letters of fire. 

Well, I carried these opinions for the better part of my 
life, the joyous and hopeful part, and then I threw them 
away — perhaps to my loss and sorrow, for in these matters 
my heart is often a rebel against my head. 



Cultivate joy in your life and in your work. For indeed 
when you think of it, over-seriousness is the bane of art as 
of life. Nothing in art was ever done well that was not a 
joy in its conception. Travail the artist must, but in gladness. 
So of the perfect lyrist, we read that his song is a rapture 
poured forth from a heart that can never grow old. 

Alexander Dumas, the greatest master of narrative fiction 
that has ever lived, toiled all day and every day, laughing 
like Gargantua at the birth of his son; and sometimes weep- 
ing, too, over his own pathos. Ah, what would one not have 
given for the privilege of climbing the stairs stealthily to 
watch the merry giant at his task ! Do you wonder that this 



2 3 2 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

rejoicing faculty furnished for many years the chief entertain- 
ment of Europe? I should not care much for a writer in- 
capable of being moved as Dumas was moved. 



Posterity is the hectic dream of the weak — it does not 
break the calm slumber of the strong. The man who works 
with his whole soul in the present, who possesses and is pos- 
sessed by the time that has been allotted him out of all eter- 
nity, — that man may miss the prize as well as another. But 
he is headed the right way to capture the award of posterity. 



Shakespeare erred in assigning only seven ages to man — 
there are at least seventy. Often we live through several in 
a single day — it all depends upon the kind of experience. 



Who has not written it over and over again and then torn 
it up in despair and still renewed the effort with prayers and 
tears, — he knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers ! 



Remember that the true struggle of life is not to achieve 
what the world calls success, but to hold that Essential Self 
inviolate which was given you to mark your identity from all 
other souls. Against this precious possession — this Veriest 
You — all winds blow, all storms rage, all malign powers 
contend. As you hold to this or suffer it to be marred or 
taken from you, so shall be your victory or defeat. 



O Memory ! thou leadest me back over the years and show- 
est me many a place where once I would have lingered for- 
ever, but now thou canst not show me one of all where I 



EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 233 

would tarry again; my Soul knoweth that not a single step 
can be retraced and that she is of the Infinite to be. 



Why do we write for the world the things we would not 
say to the individual ? Why do we send on every wandering 
wind the secrets we would not whisper in the ear of our 
chosen friend? 



Men are always talking about truth, but there is really so 
little of it in common use that it might be classed with ra- 
dium. Perhaps we should not know it if we saw it, for our 
experience deals almost wholly with substitutes. 



In making up the character of God, the old theologians 
failed to mention that He is of an infinite cheerfulness. The 
omission has cost the world much tribulation. 



The only man that ever lived who understood and par- 
doned sin was Christ. And for this men have made him God. 



If you seek to command by fear, yours will be the barren 
service that is given without the loyalty of the heart. 



Beginning as children, we walk away from God, and as 
old men we strive to totter back again. 



Grieve not that you desire always and vainly — life without 
desire is very near unto death. 



Nature has no sorrows — perhaps that is why she is immor- 
tal. 



234 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

The better is enemy of the good, said William Morris. 
Do your stint to-day and let it go for what it is worth. All 
days are ranked equal in God's fair time. You can not steal 
from to-day to give unto to-morrow, nor play at loaded dice 
with the fates. 



I have come nearly to forty year, and have bothered my 
head much with books, yet I am as ignorant of many simple 
things as when a child. Still we are ready to fight and die for 
beliefs or opinions picked up at random in the space of a 
few years. Truly spoke the Preacher, all is vanity! 



I am not the man I was ten years ago. I should not know 
the boy I was were I to meet him in the street. Time is ever 
stealing our outworn wardrobes of the flesh and spirit. 



Life is never simple to the divining spirit — every mo- 
ment of the common day is charged with mystery and revela- 
tion. 



To have nothing to say and to say it at all hazards, passes 
for much that is called achievement in literature. 



A man may boast that he can judge himself as harshly as 
another, but he makes no mistake in passing sentence. 



It is easier to make enemies than friends, but fail not to 
remember that an effort is required in either case. 



When I come to die I know my keenest regret will be that 



EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 235 

I suffered myself to be annoyed by a lot of small people and 
picayune worries, wasting God's good time with both. 

The strongest writer smiles at the praise of his strength — 
he alone knows how weak he can be. 



The very meanest man I know believes for sure that God 
is made in his particular image and likeness. 



The mystery of the Hereafter is very great indeed, but we 
may take courage in reflecting that we have left some of it 
behind us. 



The wounds of self bleed always and will not be forgiven. 



I need not write to my dear friend, for my heart talks to 
him every day over the miles. In this way, too, I tell him 
only the things I wish to tell him and so have nothing to 
change or recall after the letter is sealed and sent. I was not 
always so wise. 



Among persons whose lives touch at every point, there is 
often no communion of the soul for months and years. Were 
we to live only by the active life of the soul, our term would 
be as brief as that of the ephemera. 



Men are damned not for what they believe but for what 
they make-believe. 



Almost every friendship holds a degree of disappointment, 
yet friendship is still the best thing in the world and the con- 
stant dream of the finer souls. 

17 



2 3 6 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 

Sane persons will not expect to find absolute perfection in 
Heaven — there as here the charm of a little discontent, the 
satisfaction of turning up a small grievance, will not be de- 
nied us. 



The vice of the Pharisee is in believing that he is not like 
unto other men. The virtue of a man who knows himself a 
sinner is in believing that other men are not like unto himself. 



That which was lately power is now impotence, but wait ! 
it will soon be power again. 



It is something to have lived for the things of the mind, 
even though we have missed what the world calls wealth or 
success — those at least shall not be taken from us. 



Revise and revise and revise — the best thought will still 
come after the printer has snatched away the copy. 



Balzac laid the world under the greatest obligation of any 
modern man of letters and was driven into an untimely grave 
by the spectre of debt. The highest service is always martyr- 
dom. 



A learned young German philosopher, Dr. Otto Weinin- 
ger, pronounced the most acute mind since Kant, recently 
solved the great problem of sex and then killed himself. 
What else was there for him to do? 



Every little while it is announced that some scientist has 
pinned down the secret of life, but always the learned man 



EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 237 

has fooled himself. God will not be put into a chemical for- 
mula. 



Thou art eager to be in company and delightest in the 
conversation of thy friends, yet thou hast a better friend 
than any of these, who constantly solicits thee and whom thou 
wilt seldom hear — thy soul! 



Song of the Rain. 




ONG time I lay in my bed listening to the rain. 

In the hushed quiet of night, in the solemn 
darkness, my heart ceased its beatings to listen. 
There was naught in the world but my heart 
and the rain. 

My soul awoke at the song of the rain, drenching through 
the trees, pattering on the roof, filling my chamber with cool- 
ness and the sense of a mystic presence. My soul awoke and 
deemed that it was the pause before the End. 

Long I lay still in the darkness, hearing the song of the 
rain; feeling upon me and throughout me the balm and 
blessing of the rain; telling myself that if this were the End, 
it could not better be. My soul was all attention, eager to 
catch the word of its fate, my heart ceased its throbbing to 
listen — there was naught in the world but the rain and my 
heart. 

What was the burden of the song of the rain that I heard 
as I lay still in my bed, wrapt in the solemn darkness, feel- 
ing as I shall feel in the pause before the End? What was 
the burden of the song of the rain which my soul awoke to 
hear and for which my heart stopped its beating? 

Peace was the burden of the song of the rain that I heard 
in the deep of night when my soul thrilled like a wind-harp 
in the breath of God. Peace was the burden of the song of 
the rain. 

Now have I put away all strife and anger and unrest since 



SONG OF THE RAIN 239 

there came this wondrous message of the rain, the night and 
the silence. Now do I bear a quiet heart since my soul 
trembled like a wind-harp in the breath of God. 

Peace for all the days that yet are mine when often I shall 
lie awake in the night silence, listening to the song of the 
rain. 

Peace forevermore when my soul shall be drawn into the 
breath of God and my body shall be mingled at last with the 
balm and blessing of the rain. 

Peace forevermore ! 

V0& t&fr t&* 



Our Lady of Hrt. 



OTHING is easier than to win the favors of Our 
Lady of Art. You have only to serve her with 
all your heart and all your soul and especially 
all your time — she is a jealous mistress, as hath 
been said, and slow to forgive the neglect of a 
day or even an hour. You must forego many things that 
make for what the world calls fortune and success. You 
shall woo the shadow for your portion and leave to others 
the substance. And ever you shall toil with unwearied labor, 
while Age steals upon you and the gay procession of Youth 
passes by in mockery. The whitening hair, the flagging 
pulse, the stiffening limb, the broken slumber, the lament- 
able awakening, — these things shall not trouble your perfect 
faith, for they are dear to Our Lady. It is not enough that 



240 



PALMS OF PAPYRUS 



you be patient — you must become patience itself, though each 
returning sun bring you the same tale of futility and disap- 
pointment. This shall sustain you, that though Our Lady 
give no sign — not a flutter of the eyelids, not the hint of a 
smile at the corners of the mouth — still she sees and appraises 
your devotion. More than this you shall not ask if you be 
of the true elect. Yes, one thing more . . . just before 
you die she may give you her hand to kiss ! 

And is this all? No : some years after you are silent, with 
your hope and your despair, a little honor may be paid the 
dead man that was ever denied the living; and a few people 
may carelessly turn the pages of the Book for which in very 
truth you lived and died. 

Finis. 



Of this the Second Edition of the PALMS One Thousand copies were 
printed and the type distributed. 



UC \6 " 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



DEC 30 1909 p 



